Accidental Intimacy
by springandbysummerfall
Summary: In a universe where Earth is an intergalactic trading partner, there is one apathetic soldier stationed on Earth whose scouter rings on a private line...and a woman's voice moans with pleasure. The story of how two strangers get more than they bargained for. Raunchy themes, sometimes rom, sometimes com, all the time foul. A less than noble get together.
1. Chapter 1

AN: This was supposed to be a one shot but became 10x the acceptable length of a one shot. Other 'chapters' are written and just getting polished, so the end is nigh. with all of my stories, I try to pin down and explore maybe one or two 'canon' facets of a character's personality, and in this one I really wanted to delve into that clammed up and easily embarrassed Vegeta. It's also, of all things, inspired by kdrama. And, finally, in case you didn't read the summary or didn't believe me, I just wanted to remind you that this can be very explicit. This has unashamed, offensive, dirty, raw...well, you _know_... Frankly, I just don't want to get any grief from anyone who isn't 100% on board. So please be warned, friends, and only indulge if you're willing to _indulge_. P.S And if you don't think this kind of sex is canon than I don't know what you're doing in this fandom. P.S.S. YAMCHA IS JUST A CONVENIENT FOIL GUYZ

* * *

Hunkered down in the center of a smoky bar in the thick of a Friday night, five Saiyans sat around a table, smoking the laced cigarettes and drinking the highly concentrated beer that classified them, doubtlessly, as Saiyan Special Forces.

Four men, one woman, a table crowded with empty bottles and picked over bar food, and one boiling topic:

"Is it true what they say about Earthling dicks?"

The laughter and din of the table simmered to curiosity as one of the soldiers leaned in, dragged deeply on a cigarette, and narrowed his eyes in confidence. "Hey, I've watched enough porn. They put my Oozaru form to shame. They're massive—"

Another Saiyan pointed the mouth of his beer bottle at his friend in disagreement. "Maybe _your_ Oozaru form."

Scowl deepening in the chiaroscuro bar light, one of the Saiyan's eyes ticked away. Silent, motionless, the bar light slanted over his high cheekbones and sharp jaw but washed the rest of his face in shadows. His powerful arms were crossed over his breastplate, posture indicating— _always_ indicating—that if they kept on like this, someone might die tonight.

The solitary woman at the table barked with laughter. It was a quintessentially Saiyan smile—spiteful, eager for blood and confident that she'd draw it—which curled her face. "No way. Look, it doesn't matter how big a man is." Her wrist jerked impertinently over her lap to mimic either male masturbation or what she thought of her colleague's intelligence. "It's how you use it. Besides, I read in Interstellar Cosmo that there's no difference in size between Saiyans and any other sophisticated primate."

The men drew on their cigarettes and popped unshelled peanuts in their mouths as they considered the worldly experience of their female battle buddy. Vegeta, however, stared at the table—the empty basket that once held onion rings, to be precise—with a mask of icy, black indifference.

"I'd bet you forty gil you're wrong," Raditz snorted, banging his beer on the table as he was overcome with certainty.

"Yeah, I bet an Earthling wrote that article," Nappa snickered.

"My package," Raditz continued, gesturing at his lap, "is living proof that Earthlings have nothing on Saiyans." His grin was toothy. "Certainly nothing on _me_."

"Hey, hey! It doesn't matter how _big_ theirs are," Toma interrupted, a smirk clawing his face. "Mine's always hard, and _that's_ what matters."

Fasha's eyebrow jerked up with impudent surprise."It wasn't last night."

There was a slap on the table of approval followed by hoots and hollers, and the man made a swipe at the woman with his fist, who leaned back smoothly to avoid it and promptly put her tongue in his mouth.

"Oh, come on, you're too old for this shit," Raditz bemoaned as his beer spilled with their antics. The table bawed and hissed with disapproval as she was pulled into Toma's lap for a sloppy and indecent kiss that could only be called, at least by Saiyan standards, warfare.

As the soldiers began throwing things at each other, laughing and proving themselves to be exactly the stereotype of beer-guzzling, rough-and-tumble Saiyans starting bar brawls across the galaxy, Vegeta sat, mute, brooding, staring sightlessly. Whether he was painfully bored or about to slaughter them all simply remained to be seen.

Only when another Saiyan approached them—a woman with the characteristically thick, short hair of female infantry and a snarl of a smile—did Vegeta look up with new intensity.

"I'm headed out," she informed them, grinning at the table's antics.

"See you Monday," they all called.

And were interrupted.

"Stay."

They blinked as a deep voice penetrated through the chaos. The din of the table was smothered as the five Saiyan soldiers stared at Vegeta with a mixture of shock...

And pity.

"Uh, we'll see you Monday at formation," Raditz interrupted, who stood, patting her on the shoulder roughly and turning her towards the door. The others followed suit, and Vegeta's eyes cast downward as she waved goodbye.

But once the bar door closed behind her, Vegeta stood abruptly.

The other soldier's mouths moved as if to stop him, but they watched helplessly instead.

Vegeta moved through the crowd like a knife through butter, smooth, assured. Despite his height—shorter than average for Saiyans, and even Earthlings—it wasn't difficult to become frozen with intimidation by the leader of the Saiyan Special Forces regiment. Sure, there was the red mark on his breastplate like a hand print smeared with blood, and which denoted his rank—his really, really high rank. There were the muscles bulging from the lean frame, the kind of carved musculature that Earthlings could only strive for through years of body building, biceps and round shoulders and robust pecs poking out just above his breast plate. It was in the fearless stride, the military smoothness commanding respect. The indifferent calm born only by standing in the thick of countless fire fights and certain death, and not just surviving, but thriving. It was, most definitely, the black glower below straight and forbidding brows and above a perfectly aristocratic nose and humorless mouth. Their fearless leader was a sight to behold since they'd been stationed on Earth for the planet's latest rotation around the goddamned perfectly healthy yellow sun of this solar system. Saiyans and Earthlings alike feared him, and even his elite squadron had an abundance of cautious respect for him. No one spoke to him unless spoken to, no one joked around directly with him, and certainly, no one tried to give him dating advice.

Slipping through the crowded streets without tearing his gaze from the Saiyan, with enough space between them that she wouldn't suspect she was being followed, Vegeta stalked silently.

As he hit the intersection, he stalled, blowing air sharply through his nose, agitated with himself for his behavior. He was torn between calling her name and forcing her to face him, or taking off in the opposite direction and saving face.

His chance disappeared when she abruptly opened the passenger door of a hovercar on the side of the street, turning to slide in with a smile. Vegeta's gaze drew to the driver's side of the car, where an Earthling man stood with an idiotic grin directed at his prize, before he slid in behind the wheel.

The city lights and sounds bled together as Vegeta watched them pull away.

...

"You all knew?"

The table full of ruthless Saiyans looked down at the table and into their drinks sheepishly.

The female soldier tucked her hair behind her ear self-consciously, and Raditz' throat bobbed as he worked up the courage to confront a man that was hated passionately for being a hardass but never, _ever_ called that to his face.

"She asked us not to tell you," Fasha finally said, with a slip of an emotion left unsaid, something that sounded an awful lot like concern for Vegeta's mental health.

"I was going to tell you," the brawny Nappa muttered into his pint. "Just, later."

Vegeta leaned back into his chair and put his boots on the table. The others watched him warily, swallowing, knowing quite well that his casual posture was anything but an indication that they wouldn't soon be a smoking pile of ash.

"You pity me."

The table cast meek glances down, and Vegeta stood suddenly, disgust and embarrassment screwing his face as he turned to leave. "You're all worthless," he muttered through his teeth.

The table shrunk further into their seats.

All except Raditz, who ground his teeth, and then mumbled, "At least I _have_ a sex life."

With a strobe of blue ki and an answering roar, Vegeta flipped their table with a swipe of his palms, sending it careening into the wall, through plaster and brick and into the street, and causing shattered glass to spray like confetti over the screaming passersby on the sidewalk.

For the elite Saiyan special forces unit, it was just another Friday night on Earth.

…

The alert on his scouter beeped.

And beeped.

And beeped.

Vegeta willed it to shut up.

And beeped.

And beeped again.

With a muffled groan, Vegeta attempted to roll off the couch in his apartment and instead landed gracelessly on his forearms on the rug. He kicked the blanket wrapped around his ankles a few times before it released him and sleepily swatted at his scouter. He sent the signal to his phone on the third attempt with his eyes still screwed closed, but then glowered when the phone began ringing, too.

He grabbed for his phone, digging his palm miserably into his forehead in his quiet, lonely hole of an apartment on this unfortunate side of the universe.

Vegeta realized he was still drunk when he didn't answer with his usual brute and clipped "WHAT" and just grunted. Who knew the bottle of liquor that Toma had brought him as a housewarming gift over a year ago would come in so handy? Vegeta just might not kill him tomorrow.

"Shh," a feminine voice answered. "Don't say anything. Just do exactly what I tell you to do."

Vegeta shoved himself into a sitting position with his back against the couch and blinked at the ceiling. He glanced at his scouter, squinted with confusion, and then ran his heavy hand through the flame of his hair.

"Good boy. You might hear something when I talk. It's the splash of water, because I'm in the bathtub. There are bubbles all over my naked skin."

Vegeta's eyes flew open.

"I like the way the water feels, warm and sliding over my skin...but I love it even more when I open my legs."

Vegeta sat forward abruptly, his eyes widening with shock. He opened his mouth to unleash a scathing reprimand of whoever was on the other line—and it started with a supremely noble croak that didn't seem to be forming words—but she interrupted him.

"I told you not to talk," she chastised him firmly. "Now, I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm doing." The woman's voice was breathy. "I'm holding the phone in my left hand. My right hand is sliding over my breasts. My nipples are already puckering. I'm running my fingers over them, and it's making them harder. Mm, I like when they get perky, ready to be licked. But now my hand is moving down my belly, sliding between my legs. I'm so soft and wet already, even in the water. It feels so good," she groaned. "I want you to take your cock out, and rub yours, too."

Vegeta bolted to his feet and rapidly yanked all the blinds closed. The crimson blush that had begun its creep up his face was now visible even in the dark. Then he jerked back and forth, looking about frantically, uncertainly, to make sure no one else was hearing this, maybe, or for some kind of weapon that could breach time and space.

"Did you get it out? Unzip your pants and close your fist around it. Squeeze it for me and hold it firmly. I want you to get it ready, because I'm going to put my mouth on it."

Vegeta sank into the couch, gaping.

"I'm going to put my mouth around it very softly. You're going to feel my tongue first, slowly slide around the tip of you. My tongue's curling around your head, licking up the slit. Now I'm going to slide my mouth down and suck it all the way in."

He grabbed his rebelliously hardening crotch as if to shut it up.

She moaned. "I want every inch in my mouth until you hit the back of my throat," she explained with anticipation.

He could hear water splashing rhythmically in the background, and realizing what it indicated, Vegeta went rock hard so quickly he became light headed. His jaw tightened with chomping, embarrassed fury, and also with the struggle to hold back his own growing need.

There was another moan, more sloshing water, and then a needy whine, until the voice on the other side told him huskily, "When you cum, I want to eat it. I want you to unload it in my mouth."

Vegeta unzipped his pants rapidly and grabbed for some tissues from the box on the living room table.

With the rhythm of the woman's own urgent moans and soft splashes, the lone plant atop the coffee table began to rock back and forth as he put his feet on the table and followed suit.

"Do you hear the splashing getting faster? I'm slipping my fingers in now, thinking of your cock hitting the back of my throat. I think," the voice keened, "I'm going to cum."

Vegeta threw his head back and pumped his dick as the cries and the chime of water quickened, and staring up at his ceiling, for the first time since arriving on Earth, Vegeta enjoyed himself with single-minded, selfish pleasure.

…

A hand wrung a washcloth into a bathtub, legs folded on the bathroom floor, sullenly swishing the water about with her fingertips as the other hand pressed a pink walky talky to her mouth. "I think I'm going to come!" She moaned louder as she clinically wrang out a washcloth into the empty tub again.

Bulma let out another dramatic moan, shifting her hips as her leg prickled numbly from sitting, but her hand slipped on the wet floor and she tumbled backward, cracking her head on the side of the toilet. She cried out sharply in pain, clutching her head as distantly the sound of a man's heavy breathing became jagged and then hissed to completion. She moaned with pain, long and low and frustrated, holding the back of her skull on the tile floor, the cold, spilled water soaking into her pajama bottoms.

Bulma's own breath exhaled with force through her teeth as she struggled to sit up on the wet floor, holding the back of her head peevishly.

And then she flipped her bangs out of her face and smiled. "Honey?" She pressed the walky talky to her ear. "Was it good? Did I do okay?"

"It was okay," a man managed roughly. "Who is this?"

Bulma Briefs went rigid.

She paled. "Who is this!?"

She held the walky talky away from her face and checked the coordinates on the dial. "01-597-89," she mouthed silently.

Her heart galloped in her chest, feeling light headed. Was the room spinning? "Eight _nine_?" She thumbed off the connection with the stranger and looked at the walky talky in horror. "Nine?!"

Panicking, she turned the transmission back on and dialed the correct number, this time very carefully.

"Hello?" Answered a sleepy male voice.

"Honey?" Bulma asked with disbelief.

"What?"

"Hey, have you...did you...were you asleep?"

"Yeah." The mumble took a lot of effort. "I worked late. Why?"

"Well, your number is 01-597-85," she explained rapidly, "five, not nine, and I built this walky talky tonight and was trying it out and I'm _not_ saying I don't know what I'm doing jumping signals like this but I might have dialed the wrong—"

"Bulma?"

Bulma stopped pacing. "Yes, Yamcha?"

"I have to go to work early. Like, in a few hours. Get it? We'll talk about this tomorrow."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay." Her hand nervously grazed the clutter on her makeup stand, picking a teddy bear up and putting it back down again. "You remember our date tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah." A yawn interrupted him. "Look pretty for me."

Bulma beamed at the calendar, marked with a heart. "I always do. See you then."

He hung up before she even had the chance to slide the 'end transmission' lever down.

She scowled down at the troublesome communication device before falling into her kitchen chair.

Bulma took a moment to just let it sink in, staring at the opposite wall. Her mouth parted inch by inch in increasing surprise and mortification as she realized the thing she'd just done with a stranger.

"Oh. My. GOD," she yelled, throwing her arms in the air, before pillowing her head in them and groaning, swatting this month's issue of Interstellar Cosmo, "10 Ways to Spice Up Your Sex Life," off the kitchen table resentfully.

…

"Phone sex?" Chi Chi screeched, bobbing baby Gohan around in his front carrier. "With a stranger?"

Eighteen watched Bulma with renewed interest, culling through the bras on the clothes rack.

"It's not exactly phone sex," Bulma argued, "if it wasn't with the right person. And I didn't _enjoy_ it."

Eighteen's lips slanted. "There's nothing wrong with phone sex," she said.

"It's not like that," Bulma snapped, snatching up push up bras from the rack like her life depended on it.

ChiChi bounced Gohan and rattled a toy in front of his face. "So do you think he'll ask tonight?"

Eighteen glanced up, hair coming undone from behind her ear and sliding sleekly over one eye. "It's your five year, isn't it?"

Bulma squared her jaw and closed the fitting room curtain with a yank.

"Don't do it," ChiChi warned, waving the rattle angrily. "As soon as you're married, your sex life dies. I wouldn't recommend marriage on my worst enemy."

"Don't talk about sex in front of the baby," Eighteen admonished her, clapping her hands over the infant's ears, restrained against his mother's chest. The baby just smiled toothlessly.

"First goes the sex positions," ChiChi announced loudly. "Then the number of times you have sex a week. Suddenly he finds porn more interesting and your heart is shriveling up in your chest." ChiChi clutched her chest dramatically.

"Just because Yamcha and I don't have sex very often doesn't mean it affects how we feel about each other," Bulma claimed from the other side of the curtain.

The two women outside the curtain shared a look. They both knew Bulma and Yamcha's relationship had been suffering. Emotionally. Intimately. Amusingly. For years.

"Look," Eighteen tried. "It's not about the sex." She shot ChiChi a look. "It's about communication." She held her hands out palms up. "You have to tell each other what you want. You have to be responsive to each other's needs—"

"If your vagina gets bored, so will your heart." ChiChi interrupted.

Bulma sighed, cinching up the last hook and eye on a cream colored corset before staring at herself in the mirror. "Today is our 5th anniversary. He can't remember anything, not my birthday, not trash day. The man would forget to buy Christmas presents if people weren't shouting 'Merry Christmas' from the rooftops for weeks on end." She glowered, fluffing her short hair. "But he made reservations tonight," she contended, face transforming into a mask of determination. With the need to _believe_. "You know what that means?"

She whipped back the curtains.

"Proposal!" Chi Chi squealed.

"Proposal?" Eighteen asked, an eyebrow arching.

Bulma beamed with renewed resolve, drawing the eyes of other customers as her decolletage nearly spilled from the corset, panties stretched within an inch of their life across her hips.

"Proposal," she affirmed.

…

Bulma stared at the jeweler's box on the table with a barely suppressible grin as Yamcha paced outside the restaurant windows, talking on his phone.

Work. Always work with him. Work, work, work. But tonight she didn't have the energy to spare on the chronic frustration and embittered neglect that she had evidently signed on for when her mother had set them up years ago.

A long-legged waiter jerked to a halt beside her, putting his hand to his mouth as if to stifle a gasp and staring moonily down at the jewelry box.

He looked at her with shock. "Is that what I think it is?"

Bulma nodded with enthusiasm. "I think so. At least, it better be, or I might have to murder him." Her grin was so wide her eyes scrunched.

"Today is a very special day," the waiter confirmed, and he winked at her before sashaying away.

Bulma could hardly suppress the nervous giggles that were building inside her.

Yamcha finally called and slid into his seat. He saw her gaze, grabbed the box, and hefted it a few times as if testing the weight of it.

Bulma's eyes followed it hungrily.

He smirked, jerking it back and forth playfully, left, right, left, right, up down as her eyes dragged back and forth like a fish caught on a hook.

Bulma ripped her gaze away and clapped her hands together, radiating excitement. "To be honest, I was going to be awfully mad if you didn't do it tonight."

"Oh, yeah?" Yamcha laughed. He was debonair in the ambient light of the restaurant, with straight white teeth and short, gelled hair. Tall and broad shouldered. "It's our five year anniversary. And you know since I have to cut our night short and head back to work soon that I had to bring my girl a special gift. Go ahead." He nodded graciously at the box. "Open it."

Bulma squealed and tore off the ribbon, popping the lid open in an instant.

"Surprise!" The waiter hollered, throwing confetti over their heads, watching the stuff shimmy, ripple, and rain down on the couple and hoping the act earned him a big tip from the woman of the hour.

Bulma stared down at the open jewelry box with bewilderment.

It was a jeweled hair clip.

Bulma squinted, trying to understand.

A hair clip.

She cringed, slowly, painfully, her slender pale fingers still holding the jewelry box reverently. As the gold and silver confetti scintillated in the light and settled around them, Bulma blinked, first at the hair clip in the box, and then at the waiter, who was growing increasingly pale.

And then at Yamcha, who was preoccupied, sending a text on his phone.

The hair clip shivered in her vision as her eyes filled with wet heat.

"Thank you," was all she said.

…

Earth had a saying, something about Monday's not being fun days. Vegeta didn't care to know it, but still, today it resonated with him. In fact, he might just strangle the next Saiyan who happily mentioned the day of the week, because Vegeta had had a horrible weekend, and the beginning of this work week wasn't looking any better.

It had started with a breakup—a word that Vegeta bristled at, because it implied he had relationships at all—by someone who had told him in a round about way that she found him boring. Despite that he had never cared about anything except power, rank, and control, those very things that made Saiyans worth a shit in the eyes of others and that he had acquired and gloated about with obnoxious pride, it was the truth of his feelings, or mostly that he _had_ feelings, which rankled him. So _that_ was something Vegeta was quickly burying six feet under the ground of his subconscious as he told himself over and over again that it was the simply fact that someone rejected _him_ that bothered him so.

Saiyans were fearless, after all; they weren't just competitive, but eager to look death in the eye and then drag someone there. To be Saiyan didn't necessarily imply just being a _soldier_ , because no other race in the universe had quite as much fun doing it. Vegeta also had the advantage of being really, really powerful. Waving a little device that rated ki energy, the doctor that had delivered Vegeta from his mother's womb had gaped and stammered, unable to form the numbers with his mouth. Vegeta had the privilege of having the highest power level of any known Saiyan. And then, with every victory in battle, the tangible proof of his perfection grew higher and higher. He was also ambitious, preening with accomplishment as he smoothly jumped every hurdle in his life with smug finesse. He was the best of the best, and that's why this morning when his boss had told him that he would have to stay longer on Earth, a kind of isolation that they only imposed on the truly stupidest of Saiyans, he'd felt the world sway with uncertainty.

Then, once the woman he had uncomfortably had what might or might not have been a "relationship" with had slid into the car of an Earthling—a helpless _Earthling_ —Vegeta had done something he hadn't done in a very long time. He had gotten very drunk. And _then_ , when some woman had called him moaning into the receiver, he'd given in, grabbed a tissue with premeditated intent, and blown his load. Truly, he was the height of third class sensibility these days.

It was Monday, and Vegeta really, truly felt like he was going to force someone face first into an early grave by the end of the night.

At least, he hoped so.

...

Bulma's head popped up from the hull of the star ship. A red handkerchief was knotted atop her head to keep her hair out of her eyes, sliding back her goggles on her forehead and regarding the women she worked with with wide, blue eyes.

"You're making fun of me."

"Noooo. No!" The women laughed, turning wrenches familiarly.

Bulma sulked. "You think this is funny."

One of the women glanced up enthusiastically. "Did he sound hot, at least?"

Bulma felt the weight of the walky talky in her jumpsuit pocket, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her glove and frowning. "He sounded bored," she complained.

"Did he get off?" Another woman asked her excitedly. Someone gasped, putting her hand to her mouth in giddy embarrassment at the question.

Bulma blushed, leaning down to grab a rubber mallet and somehow smacking her head against the metal wall of the star ship. She rubbed her head sheepishly, lips mouthing _ow_. "I think so."

"So you were good, right?"

Bulma wasn't amused.

"Look at it this way: you gave some guy a great time out of the goodness of your heart. Good deed done for the week."

The other women chorused in agreement before laughing.

Another woman's eyebrow head shot up from under her own star ship. "Hey, did your man pop the question this weekend?"

The other women stopped what they were doing and turned to Bulma.

Bulma looked down, but not quick enough, not quick enough to hide the pained look of disappointment. But her ears burned red with anger. "What man?" She began hammered loudly. Forcefully. "I'd rather talk about the stranger I had phone sex with," she muttered through her clenched teeth. "At least _he_ can get it up."

And then she rested her head against the cold hull of the star ship in a humiliation she doubted she'd ever live down.

…

"Women are bitches," Raditz was yammering beside him.

"Don't be like that, you know he's hurting," Fasha chided.

"Yeah, well, I'm trying to make him feel better," Raditz snapped.

Vegeta rolled his eyes and downed another shot. Vegeta didn't always indulge—in fact, he _never_ indulged—but when he did, as he was doing more often, he did it with one intention:

Face planting into sweet black oblivion on the cold bar floor.

"They're pscyhopaths," Raditz cried defensively, arguing with his female battle buddy. "You do one thing wrong and they go crazy. 'Oh, you got a stiffy for another woman, now you deserve to die.'" Raditz scoffed. "And when you're dating them, they're animals, scenting for weakness." He smelled Fasha dramatically. She batted him away. "They just want to tame you and break you like a wild stallion. Women are all the same. It's better to be realistic about this." Raditz nodded in agreement with himself sloppily. Realism was a very Saiyan trait, and realistically, Raditz was quite drunk.

Nappa picked up where Raditz had trailed off. "This is how I see it. If they're not Saiyan and defending my back in battle, they're all just things to slip myself into." He knocked his glass on the bar with feeling. "That's how I stay sane. Just treating everyone like a fuck. Could you imagine what it'd be like if I actually cared? My money'd be gone, and my dick would be limp."

"You're a warrior, sir," Raditz continued, head hanging heavily over his pint and inching closer and closer to the counter top. "That's what we are: cold blooded, ruthless, cool as fuck Saiyans. We're good at killing things, sleeping, eating." He counted his fingers, then hiccuped. "Fucking."

Nappa nodded.

"But she can't expect more from you," he argued belligerently with his eyes closed. "You're a Saiyan. You're not a, a, a settling down type..."

"If you don't have more time to pretend like you care, then who is she to complain?" Nappa was full of advice tonight. Bad advice, but advice nonetheless. "She's barely an elite, that's what I say."

His female soldier leaned back to look at him sympathetically, eyes glazed, several shots in. "Captain, you're a...a..." Her eyes squinted with concentration as she tried to find a compliment that suited a man like Vegeta. "A hard working guy. Don't let her get you down."

"I guess it's time for you to indulge in the locals," Nappa laughed.

"To test their cock size?"

By now the three Saiyans were too blitzed to remember to watch their mouths around this particularly prickly—and higher ranking—Saiyan.

"Vegeta needs to get laid. Like, _laid_. He's not going to get a good hard lay from an Earthling."

"Fuck I hate you guys," Vegeta muttered, glaring down at his drink.

Vegeta fisted the glass and swallowed its contents in one gulp.

…

The cops had been called after Nappa had thrown a Ts'ingosoldier through the front window and started an all out brawl. Nappa didn't much like Ts'ingos, alleging that one had bungled a mission in the heat of a fire fight and he'd never let another one drink in peace again.

Vegeta had claimed responsibility disjointedly. He'd talked the police out of pressing charges with a professional coolness that he didn't feel, bailed his team out of jail— _again (_ if they weren't worth their weight in gold in a fight than he'd have personally sent them all to Hell by now)—and then Vegeta fell into a taxi.

He stepped out of the taxi, surveyed the street.

In his hands he twiddled his scouter.

And put in coordinates.

His thumb hesitated over the dial, and for a minute he just stared at the innocuous arrangement of numbers that hadn't yet been deleted from his list.

Vegeta's stomach was churning, and he leaned against the brick wall heavily.

But rather than hitting 'dial out,' he went instead to his recent incoming calls and scrolled down the list.

The contents of his stomach threatened to erupt from his belly, but he tamped it down aggressively. He was a man to whom nothing happened to without his permission. Not even involuntary bodily functions.

Nothing except one thing, by one woman.

He was looking for one number in particular.

…

Upbeat music from the radio blared, shot glasses filled with liquor lined up neatly beside the am/fm on the makeup desk. Bulma danced with the kind of lack of inhibition of someone half-drunk and alone. Hopping up and down in her bare feet and singing into her brush, her short hair swinging from side to side with her enthusiasm, Bulma was free to be herself. She spent many Friday nights like this. Alone.

Then she threw herself onto her bed on her back, the warm fuzz of the alcohol languidly settling around her.

She was scowling at the ceiling when something vibrated under the small of her back.

Clutching underneath her and fumbling, her hands closed around the walky talky. She thumbed the talk button sulkily.

"Hello?"

"You," came a gravelly, low accusation.

She bolted up in bed with a gasp, pointer finger rising imperiously. "You!" A frown deepened on her face. "This is the guy from last night!" She chuffed with the indignity. "You're a dirty, dirty pervert, you, you pervert! I hope you're happy with your free show!" She smashed the end button down and tossed the walky talky behind her, where it clattered to the floor.

Her carpet began vibrating loudly, and eyes blazing, she leaped off the bed to answer it, forgetting the resolution to never think of the phone sex incident again that she'd made half a second ago. She squared her shoulders but wasn't able to threaten hellfire and damnation as planned before he'd interrupted.

" _I'm_ the pervert? You're the one who called me!"

"I am not a pervert, I am a polite young lady who thought she dialed her boyfriend's number!" Bulma sat heavily on the edge of her bed. "And it's not like, god forbid, you tried to stop me!"

"I should report you for sexual harassment!"

She gaped. "I should report _you_!"

"I have the whole conversation recorded." He was was loud and self-righteous. "Available to anyone. The police...your boyfriend. Who'd believe I was the one who forced you?"

A strangled sound escaped from Bulma's throat. "You wouldn't!" She struggled to put her fury into eloquent words. Found them. "You are so mean!"

"I can be very mean," he snarled, stalking through an alley, listing only slightly and catching himself on the brick wall with his hand.

"Why?" She pleaded, running her hand over her face with exasperation. "Why are you calling me? It was an accident, and I'm sorry," she whined. "I won't bother you again."

"No." Vegeta halted in his tracks, suddenly solemn. "No, I'm sorry."

Bulma blinked. "Sorry for what?"

"For calling you just to start an argument. I shouldn't lose control like that..."

There was something rough and buried in his voice, something...insecure? Something...hurt.

"Is there something wrong?" Bulma asked tentatively.

"I'm just terrible at this stuff." The man's voice dipped, smooth for a moment, and then catching like velvet over gravel. "At...feelings..."

Bulma looked down at the jewelry box that she'd threw in her trashcan just to spite it. "Yeah, me, too."

"I'm not good at anything but work." Or killing things, to be precise, he thought. "That's what my...ex...says, anyway."

"I think most people worry about that every now and then," she told him encouragingly, before leaning over and palming one of the still full shot glasses. "It's easy to get wrapped up in the day in day out of your job." Her voice became hard. "And then neglect the people you care about." And slammed it, thinking of Yamcha again.

"I'm very good at what I do." There was a sigh. "I'm a very important person."

She snorted wryly. He didn't run short on praise for himself, did he? "Well, look. You work hard. That's nothing to be ashamed of." Bulma twirled the edge of the sheet around her finger. "Your...ex. She didn't like how often you worked?"

Vegeta ran his hand over his face, smothering another sigh, and started shuffling out of the alley to his apartment complex.

"I didn't have time for a relationship," he conceded. "I should have been...more nice. She was nice to me. She's a hard worker. She's...not bad looking."

Bulma stumbled over his choice in compliments. "Well, how about this," Bulma offered. "Don't think about what made her so great. Or all the good times you might have had. What about the bad things?" Bulma slapped an unhappy smiley face sticker over Yamcha's face in one of the photos that stood on her nightstand. "What about the things that pissed you off?" Because that's what _she_ was in the mood to bitch about.

Vegeta opened the door to his building with a frown. "I don't like being underestimated."

"Good!" She quipped in camaraderie. "I'll go next. I don't like being unappreciated."

"I'm in control all of the time. They let loose, but I can't. I have to be someone they can look up to and depend on."

"He never calls me just to talk anymore. We never talk. We never hang out. It's like we're not even together. It's so lonely."

"I can't enjoy being around them, and they punish me for it. By saying 'hi' in the morning." Vegeta narrowed his eyes. "Inviting me out to have fun..."

"It's been so long since someone besides myself has made me cum," she admitted, sighing.

Vegeta snorted enthusiastically in agreement.

"And honestly..." Bulma sighed self-deprecatingly, holding out a shot glass dramatically and letting slip a secret she'd been hiding from even her closest friends. "He doesn't...he doesn't go down on me. He thinks it's gross."

"That's a fucking shame." The stranger said it with grim seriousness.

Her fingers curled around the walky talky, and she rolled onto her stomach. "Don't you have someone on the side, at least?"

She was met with silence.

"...No," he finally admitted.

"You don't have anyone to..." Bulma cleared her throat. And bit her lip slowly. "Someone to take the edge off without strings attached? Anyone to put their mouth around it," her voice dipped huskily, uncertainly, "when you're feeling stressed?"

Vegeta stumbled as he made his way up the stairs to his apartment. The key slid into the doorknob with a protest, and it creaked open to reveal a sparse living room.

He steadied himself as he shut the door behind him. "No," he finally answered self-consciously. "I don't go looking for relationships like that... I'm too busy. And I don't...socialize."

Bulma fell back into her bed on her back, the walky talky resting delicately against her lips. The room spun a little.

"Do you...like it? When a woman gives you head?"

Bulma waited uncertainly, the silence stretching on for long enough that she wondered if she had crossed a line and been hung up on.

"Yes," the stranger finally answered, with a hint of unease.

"I like to do it," she confided softly, gazing up at the ceiling with her hand clasping the walky talky, the smooth plastic suddenly sensual in her palm. "Put it in my mouth, I mean. I just...genuinely like the taste of it, kind of worshiping it. Feeling like I'm in control, winning. Did your ex like to go down on you?"

Vegeta felt his face heat. Suddenly his apartment walls felt too thin, and he found himself wondering if his neighbors could hear them. "She didn't like to. She did...once." The admission was like pulling teeth. But there was something harmless about confiding it in the dark to a disembodied voice. "She didn't want to swallow, and she obviously wasn't enjoying it. ...I couldn't cum." Vegeta's face flushed. He fell onto his couch, throwing his arm heavily behind him to rest on the arm of the couch.

Tender curiosity tugged her forward. "Well, was the sex good, at least? You could cum then, right?"

"No. I..." He cleared his throat. His skin felt too tight, itchy. "First time in a long time." Vegeta's eyes slid sideways. "Completion, I mean."

Bulma's eyes widened, and she turned on her side. "Did you like it?" She whispered into the receiver with excitement. "I mean, my call last night. Was it any good?"

Vegeta stared up at the ceiling from the couch wearily, put his arm over his forehead, and blinked. "Yes," he finally answered.

His tone was flat, even resentful.

But the answer bolted like lightning through him.

Bulma smiled secretively, and she rolled on her bed with a quick burst of happiness. "Good. Good night, stranger."


	2. Chapter 2

Scouring the grocery store for a dinner that required only a few brain waves to assemble, Bulma's ringtone interrupted the late night quiet with an obnoxious jangle. She slid her phone from her pocket and wheeled into the cereal aisle.

And committed the age-old sin of answering a call without checking who was on the other end.

His voice was rough and strident over the line. "Does your boyfriend know about you calling me?"

Bulma's eyes widened and her grocery cart jerked to a stop.

Her heart fluttered with the shock.

Why would _he_ be calling again?!

Unless…unless he was after a free ride?

Bulma Briefs was **not** loose.

"That's hardly any of your business. Are you calling me because you think I put out easy or something?" Her eyes narrowed, her fist planting on her hip. "Because that was a one-time thing."

Vegeta snorted. "You're insulting." Like he'd call someone for sex. "Who said I'd be remotely interested in a repeat?"

"You wish," she replied suspiciously, tucking her short hair behind her ear. "Besides." Bulma stared up at the cereals. "Him and I, we're not really... _together_." She winced. She definitely wasn't doing herself any favors here. She gazed at the ceiling with exasperation with him, with herself. "Look, we've dated off and on again... We're just currently 'off.' No harm, no foul," she muttered. Bulma grabbed some cereal from the shelf, shoulders hunched around her ears.

"So you called a man who's not even interested," the stranger observed, oozing mockery, "moaning and begging for attention?" He laughed at her. "Can't say I see the logic in that."

Even a total stranger was criticizing her love life. Bulma clutched her purse tightly. Her friends used to call her thrill-seeking; now she was just trying too hard. "Look, I just thought...I just thought it would finally catch his interest." Her voice grew small. "He doesn't seem interested in...sex," her cheeks pinkened, "or _me_ , anymore. He's a nice guy and all, but he's..."

 _Too_ nice.

Bulma swatted away the memories. "Look, I'm at the grocery store." She glanced around the cereal aisle. "Can't this conversation wait?"

Vegeta frowned. "You shouldn't chase after a man like that. You shouldn't chase after anyone you're not trying to kill."

It was very Saiyan advice, and his jaw tightened as he realized he may have given himself away with it. A Saiyan would have picked up on the sentiment for slaughter right away; then again, fighting was such a natural state of being for them that it might have gone right over her thick Saiyan head.

 _Was_ she Saiyan? Did he even _want_ her to be Saiyan?

The box of cereal hovered over her shopping cart as Bulma's own teeth grit. "Can we _not_ talk about this right now?" The cardboard box clattered as she dropped it.

Vegeta's mouth opened, but the words dried up in his throat. He was having the problem where the verbal lashing he had anticipated giving suddenly wasn't what he wanted to say.

With his scouter smashed against his ear to prevent other people from hearing, gliding through the hollowed out dark of the barracks with a ground-eating pace, it didn't matter if she were Saiyan, but that _he_ wasn't _like_ other Saiyans.

In the spectacular way where he was a like a god among men, sure, Vegeta could accept that. But it was becoming obvious in a totally fucked up way that he wasn't the stuff of worship as much as he was a Saiyan anomaly. Leadership above him treated him like a pariah these days, or like any other fucking foot soldier. Granted, he wasn't very good at following the rules, and trespassing them had caused him to be exiled to this blood-boiling planet.

But he'd spent _years_ using the laws of warmongering to his advantage so that he could claw his way to the top of the food chain, and now there was no longer any reward in it. The line between following the rules and getting what he wanted was becoming increasingly ambiguous. He used to blow shit up to feel better about life. "Rearrange the scenery," as Nappa elegantly called it. Being sat on the shelf in the cobwebby part of the closet, with no promotion or explosion in sight, was, for Vegeta, the deepest insult.

Vegeta didn't want to be just some rank-and-file sent to the trash can of space. He didn't want to be average. He didn't want to be ignored. He wanted to be applauded. He wanted to be appreciated. He wanted to be special.

His throat was tight. "Have you ever done that before?" Vegeta suddenly needed to know.

"What?" Bulma looked around the empty aisle with embarrassment. "Phone sex?" She whispered, cupping her hand around the phone.

"Yeah."

Her parted lips were frozen on the answer. "...No."

"You're not awful at it."

"Thanks," she said dryly, pushing the shopping cart slowly to the self-checkout register. "Good enough to make men cum for a living?" She smiled, teasing. The clerk behind the register blinked up at her in surprise.

Vegeta was finally striding down the hall again, and he pressed the scouter to his ear as he looked suspiciously around the hall for interlopers. "Cumming," he said experimentally, "is always good, isn't it?"

Her smile grew as she tossed her items into the plastic bags at the checkout. She sighed dramatically. "Well, I'm so glad _you_ got some benefit out of it."

Passing row after row of windows, peeking into training rooms, Vegeta gave a quick once over to form and progress distractedly. Babying the lower class peons hadn't ever been part of his duties until he'd gotten his orders for Earth. He _despised_ it here. "Why waste your time? Don't you have better things to do?"

Bulma grumbled under her breath. "Why are you harping on about this?"

Why _was_ he? He came to a stop at a window…and failed to answer. _Why_ had he called her again?

Because he was a fool. He clenched his teeth. It had been the part of him that couldn't leave well enough alone. He'd never been bested in this way before, and this felt an awful lot like what being overpowered felt like. The agony of the humiliation and indignity _needling_ him. This was an obsessive need to right the scales again, to one-eighty back to this woman who'd called him with the most vulgar and basest of intentions, and whom he hadn't successfully resisted...

Reminding her that she had a boyfriend had been just a way for him to get a jab at her right out of the gate. To regain control on a planet on which he had increasingly no control of his life or himself with some good old-fashioned low blows.

So, if he wanted to finally end it with the ball in his court, he'd end it on an insult here and hang up for good.

His mouth opened, preparing for nuclear emotional obliteration.

Instead, one hand drifted up, touching the scouter they spoke through lightly. "I just don't understand the logic of enduring troubled interpersonal relationships when there are plenty of more rewarding pursuits," he grumbled.

"Love doesn't make sense," Bulma explained, even if she felt like the last person to be waxing eloquent about the emotion. She pressed the phone to her ear with her shoulder. "Look, you're looking for logic where there is none," she finished. _That_ , at least _,_ she could get behind.

He smirked. "A softy, then? Hard to picture you as a romantic, what with all that panting and 'fuck me' business the other night."

A gasp caught in her throat. "I'm a beautiful young woman who is capable of both things, thank you." The automatic doors opened to the outside world, and she walked leisurely to her car, bags hanging from her arms as she swept through the parking lot. She readjusted the weight of the sacks so that she could snatch the strawberry lip gloss from her purse. "No wonder your girlfriend dumped you." She gave an unladylike snort as she dragged the lip gloss over her lips. "You're an asshole."

Vegeta's eyes widened with shock. He made a choking noise, going stiff with embarrassment and the anger that came with it.

But he looked away self-consciously. "I work much better alone anyway."

"By choice?" Her tone was playful.

Her only answer was a growl.

"If you can ask the hard ball questions, so can I," she reminded him.

"If you don't answer, then I don't have to either," he countered.

"Fine." Bulma sidled into her hovercar and buckled up, staring out the windshield with her jaw set. "I'll answer if you do."

"Amuse me."

"You called, you first."

"Fine. I never turn down a challenge." His tone was cheery and totally full of shit. "No, I'm not in a _relationship_." He said the word like it were something disgusting that he wanted to drop and then stomp all over.

Bulma rolled her eyes. What a _boy_.

"What I had with…my ex...I made an exception, and it didn't work. I'm too career-minded to care." And because now he felt vulnerable, Vegeta crafted an insult and a brag all in a neat little package. He was good at those.

He puffed up. "And that strategy has assured that I am more successful and revered than you will ever be, so you tell me who wins."

She just scoffed. "I'm _so_ hurt." She shifted in her seat, dismissing the snub, eyes sharp with interest. "But your job can't be _all_ of it."

She doubted him? Vegeta shifted his feet, uncomfortable, ill-prepared. "I manage a lot of people," he finally said. "That's...draining." He leaned heavily against the wall. "That's enough socializing to give me nightmares in Hell. I'm not a people person. That's why the last...relationship...didn't work."

He'd wanted his last relationship to work because he wanted to feel like _he_ worked. He'd chased her because he needed to feel _competent_. And normal. Instead, he'd failed spectacularly. Things had been so pathetically lonely and boring and bleak that he'd accepted an offer to go out on a date. But he wasn't comfortable mingling or _performing_ , acting the way a man was supposed to act with a woman, being clownishly sociable among coworkers. When she'd pulled him aside to castigate him at the bar last week, she'd called him dysfunctional. It wasn't the worst name he'd been called, but it was the most apt.

Bulma shifted the phone. "What do you do for a living?"

Vegeta gave how much he could safely divulge some thought. Any mention of his home planet or a snippet of his line of work and he'd be found out. Saiyans were well-known throughout the city, a city smattered with military posts and tourists. They tended to…draw attention. "I lead a military squad," he said carefully. "What do you do?"

"I'm a machinist and technician," she answered easily. The city was a huge port for intergalactic visitors, and star ship maintenance was a big business. She could be anyone, and she knew it. "I fix star ships."

Not Saiyan, then, he realized.

And relaxed.

Her mind turned over this new information as she idled the hovercar from the parking lot to the mouth of the street. In the military? He could be anyone or anything, then. He could be exceedingly ugly, one of those bulbous, inhuman looking aliens. Her nose wrinkled. Or he could be buff and strong and noble and sacrificing, like the warrior hero on the cover of a romance novel or a men's fitness magazine...

"You know what? I don't think nice is what you want."

Bulma's foot jerked on the brake as the street light suddenly turned red.

"Girls who want nice guys don't beg them to unload in her mouth."

Bulma gasped.

"Shit. Gotta go."

The line clicked.

She stared incredulously at her phone. "Did he just hang up on me?!"

The red light turned green, indifferent to the abuse. She tossed her phone irritably on the passenger seat. Noble warrior her ass. The crass mercenary. "The nerve!"

Vegeta turned the corner and walked right into his squadron, who laughed at some bawdy joke about tomorrow's plans once their guard duty shift ended.

"Want to come, sir?" They asked hesitantly.

Vegeta barely spared them an apathetic look as he continued stalking down the hallway. "I have plans."

He fingered his scouter.

They watched him head to his office with expressions of sympathy.

…

Eighteen and ChiChi speared salad with their forks as Bulma tried her best to look unaffected.

"So...you just left? Like, you didn't even mention it?" ChiChi was visibly fuming. "…That you had expected a _ring_?"

Bulma sipped her wine haughtily. "No." She primly folded her napkin and placed it in her lap. "I did not."

"Why?!" ChiChi's level of noise startled the diners around them.

Bulma stared at her very loud friend. "Because. If that's how it's going to be, then he's made his choice. I can't change that he's a wimpy jerk who I want to strangle." Bulma's hands clutched the stem of her empty wine glass, and then she shook it with a wretched scowl.

"It's also not much of an aggressive tactic," Eighteen countered flatly, eating her lunch with her usual disdain for all things. "You could have just told him you two were over. I'm surprised you didn't." Bulma wasn't known for keeping her opinions to herself.

At Bulma's look of guilt, the women across from Bulma shared a pause.

"...You," Eighteen began tentatively, " _are_ breaking up with him, aren't you?"

"Of course!" Bulma cried flippantly, cutting into her steak. "Right after I make him regret ever taking me for granted," she ground out, and the knife sawed against ceramic.

"That sounds ominous," ChiChi snarked into her glass of water.

"How exactly," Eighteen asked carefully, "are you proposing to make him pay?"

Bulma sighed noisily, and her head sank into her hand. "I don't know. I don't know. I just...I can't stand this anymore. I want him to regret losing me and have a change of heart and realize I'm the best thing he's ever had, but I also don't want to ever see his face again." Bulma tossed her napkin down, her voice rising. "You know, I don't want to have to _try_. I shouldn't _have_ to try." Bulma looked at the women with her hand buried in her bangs. "I shouldn't have to beg him to commit. He should be begging _me_ to commit to _him_. _I_ _'_ _m_ the catch."

ChiChi considered the issue. "Do you think he hasn't proposed because he just doesn't want to marry? That it's not you personally?" ChiChi watched Bulma. "Or, because he's scared to?"

"It _is_ Yamcha," Eighteen replied.

All three women snickered.

Bulma sighed. That Yamcha didn't exist any longer, though. He was no longer too scared to approach her, too timid to touch her. Since entering the upper classes, he'd become a proper philistine businessman. Now he wasn't interested in courting a fallen socialite. Repulsed was more like it.

ChiChi scowled. "Why hasn't _he_ just broken things off then?"

"He hasn't proposed or broken things off because he has it too good," Bulma muttered, downing her glass of wine.

" _I don'_ _t think nice is what you want._ _"_

A few years ago, Bulma might have said Yamcha was a nice guy and it wouldn't have even done him justice. Yamcha had been a little awkward at first, nervous, new money in a city ran by old money that had invested in intergalactic interests from the minute Earth had mastered space travel—a project the Briefs family had helmed.

From the deserts on the opposite end of the continent, Yamcha and his mother had struck it rich and migrated to wealthier shores. That's when Yamcha's mother had made a bargain with Bulma's own mother at Wednesday bingo night, causing a chorus of gasps and sniggers from the other socialites. If Yamcha's mother won, she scored a first date for her only son with Bunny's snooty, glamorous, playgirl daughter. Bunny had laughed and graciously accepted.

Yamcha's mother had surprised them all with her victory. She'd scored a slam dunk for her son's upward mobility, and it started with Bulma.

Turned out Yamcha's family was _really_ good at gambling.

Bulma had been ready to ground him beneath her heels. But he'd been skittish. Fumbling. Sweet. Eager to please, just because, and with big, dopey, naive eyes. He saw a beautiful woman who may be right in front of him but would always be out of his reach. Bulma, jaded and rich, had found it refreshing and endearing. He'd been so bumbling and cute. Harmless.

Now she was a thing that he had really liked to play with back then but then sat on the shelf one day and never really felt like coming back to.

And he was bored, bored, bored of her, but he was too nice to call it quits. Too nice to break her heart, too nice to tell her he was seeing other women, too nice to slap her ass when he was fucking her from behind.

He was just a nice guy.

She used to be a proud woman. Why did she take this shit? Just because she was so goddamned lonely?

"Maybe you should start phone sexing random men as a part-time thing," Eighteen offered drolly. "Maybe _they_ _'_ _d_ be more willing to commit."

"Sugar daddy!" ChiChi cried.

Bulma reddened with embarrassment and irritation. "I'm a classy woman. Bulma Briefs requires more than a phone call before she puts out."

A number on her phone though proved otherwise.

...

Bulma was the kind of person you could leave in front of a rock in the middle of nowhere, and when you came back she'd have figured out how to intercept enemy satellite signals and communicate in sixty different languages with the thing.

That's why her employers allowed her to work infinite overtime, and she took advantage of it, because she was a broke bitch and they knew she was worth more than her hourly pay anyway.

And so, alone in a vast, empty hangar and late into the evening's clutches, when her walky buzzed to life in her pocket, she startled.

"What are you doing?" His voice was dark, demanding, and just the slightest bit tinny and unclear.

She hadn't expected _him_ to call again. She made a face down at the walky in her hand. Well, hadn't expected, but maybe, way, way back in the recesses of her mind, she'd wondered as she washed her hair or made her bologna and cheese sandwich if he'd call her again with that voice smooth as honey, asking her about herself, and she could slip the walky from her pocket and say...

" _You_ again? Haven't you gotten your fill of me already?"

"Careful," he warned. "You might not want to hear how many men you leave dissatisfied." Vegeta smiled. It was a dastardly, terrifying, well-practiced thing, but Bulma couldn't see it, so she didn't know to be scared. "Tell me," he dove right in with a question that had seared him since they'd spoken last night. "Do you ever feel trapped?"

Bulma blinked. She put down the drill, wiped her greasy hands off on a rag. "What do you mean?"

"By your job. By others." His tone was strung tight and persistent. "Do you ever feel alone, even when you're around other people?"

Her eyes wandered over the metal guts of the ship she was working on. The hangar was empty of life, but his voice filled the space.

Tonight, she had once again stayed late when others chose to leave early, in part because she was ambitious but cock blocked by no formal education, having been an heiress and not expecting to need one and all…. But also because she had no one to go home to. She knew it was maudlin, but her girl friends had significant others and lives, no matter how zealously Bulma wished they'd call and hang out more often. It was hard enough feeling rejected by your significant other, but to be low on the list of priorities for your friends, too? Bulma felt like she'd gone from hero to zero. She'd once been the belle of the socialites, and now she could stand in the middle of the subway platform, jostled by hundreds of bodies whose faces only stared through her. Where once she'd had a fete of a social life, now she twiddled with tech in front of the late night talk shows, talking at her after a long day at work, a single-serving frozen dinner and a celebrity gossip magazine on her lap, and just hoped life would get better tomorrow. It didn't. "Yes," she whispered.

Vegeta felt a torrent of rising emotion overflow with her agreement. "I'm surrounded by other people all the time," he complained forcefully, "but I never want to be close to any of them. I don't even have any friendships forged in the fires of battle. I just have people I lead. I think it's impossible for me to care about others emotionally and not as some kind of Saiyan inventory I'm in charge of."

"I think that's why sex is so nice," she confided softly, shimmying further into the bowels of the ship, holding the walky tight as she pulled a socket wrench from her belt. "It's nice to feel that closeness for a moment, even if it doesn't last."

Her mind slid to the last time she and Yamcha had gotten physical. The look he had as he undressed her, with as much excitement as one regards laundry that needs to be folded; the fancy finish of the paint on the ceiling as she faked what she'd hoped were sexy sounds, imitating closeness; the hollow boredom, the throbbing discontent afterward. Was she a freak or something? Was sex always so dull? But when she was with him, it didn't feel _right_.

Was it shallow of her to need more? To need something overwhelming, hard and fast? Some one that could make her scream, clawing his back and holding him tight as he drove into her because he wanted her just as badly? Where the hell did a woman find a man like that? The classifieds?

She pulled herself up and out of the engine and headed into the cabin to test the electrical.

The last time she'd been over at Yamcha's—it felt like ages ago, with an altogether different, richer, and more hopeful Bulma—they'd been watching a movie. She'd climbed onto his lap, giggling coyly, drawing circles on his crotch with her hips. But he'd rejected her advances, complaining he was tired. So she'd excused herself to go to the bathroom, hiding a face colored with shame.

And she'd lost her mind. She'd hiked up her skirt and rubbed herself with her fingers on the closed toilet seat until her thighs were wet and she was biting her lips to keep from crying out as she came. When she'd come out of the bathroom, he'd been asleep.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

As if the stranger had read her mind, he asked, "But do you feel that way with him?"

Bulma looked out the windshield at a concrete wall, the hangar enclosing her.

"No," she said, the admission ghosting her lips.

Had she said it out loud? Her heart drummed in her ears.

She'd thought admitting it would hurt more. It was admitting a perfectly fuckable man didn't want to fuck her, like she was broken or wrong or really unattractive or something.

But hearing herself say that she wasn't attracted to _him_...

Wow.

She _wasn't_ head over heels for Yamcha. She really didn't _like_ Yamcha. She didn't even _want_ to get married to Yamcha. It didn't matter to her that he didn't want to marry her, but that he didn't think she was special enough to ask.

It was absurd, putting up with him, she realized. No, she never felt close to him when they were physical. Intimacy was the last adjective she'd used to describe how she felt towards him. So why did she endure his rejection? Because women were just expected to put up with their wandering man-children? Because she'd settled? Because she was willing to pay a high price just for a friend these days? What was _wrong_ with her?

She looked out the star ship's windshield as rain began to patter and then grow thunderous on the metal roof of the hangar, the red and yellow glow of the cabin lights marring her face and creating shadows which streaked down her cheeks.

"What if I told you," Bulma said softly into her walky talky, "that I'm done with being sat on the shelf?"

What the fuck did he care?

"I'd say you'd be a lot stronger for it," he said instead, and meant it.

…

Bulma's couch was soft against her bottom as she sat in only panties and a crop top, fiddling a screwdriver in the mechanical guts of a radio and laughing into the phone pressed against her ear.

"It's an old world walky talky. It's pretty elementary, just an old nine volt connector and in-line coupler and stuff I picked out of a junk pile, but…I managed to call you on it, didn't I?"

"And now you're building a radio?"

"Mm-hmm," she said with a bunch of stray wire bit between her teeth and her safety glasses inching down her nose.

"…Why?"

"My family has a long history of gadget-making," Bulma replied, laughter in her voice. "This is pretty rudimentary stuff, but it relaxes me." And it was all she had of them these days.

"If you use palonium cable, you'll get better reception," Vegeta mentioned carelessly, head hanging off his bed.

Vegeta had called her again. Called her while he was walking out of work, glancing around to make sure no one would catch him in the act of being weak. Called her compulsively, for the third time this week. Tonight he'd walked the few city blocks that divided the Saiyan garrison inside the sprawling intergalactic military complex to his apartment, waiting for him dark and silent as a tomb. At least the military had structure. At least he knew what was expected of him on a mission. Out here, in the rest of the world everyone else inhabited, he felt wild and purposeless. An outsider.

"I tried that," she said, juggling the soldering iron and wire clippers and searching for the tape that had rolled under her butt. "That stuff costs a fortune, though."

"Nothing worth having is free," Vegeta said carelessly as he gazed at the upside down skyline, bare hand lying on his stomach.

She snorted. "Is that what you told your ex before she went down on you?"

His eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you be telling it to your boyfriend?"

"Ouch." She plucked a pen from the couch cushion and scribbled notes on the back of her hand, before closing up and tightening the last screw on the back of the radio. "You're vindictive."

"You don't get far in my profession without a particular disposition."

"Yeah, well," she snickered, "that disposition doesn't include a sex drive, apparently."

He couldn't say why he let her get under his skin, because that's exactly what he was getting himself into. By calling her he was inviting her to needle him. It was a game they shared. Why he kept seeking her out, even though she said things he wouldn't let anyone else get away with. Why a proud man with an anger problem like himself would enjoy this kind of masochism. He didn't want to reflect on it, honestly. He just wanted to escape.

"You're so tasteless."

"I taste perfectly wonderful."

"You've proven my point."

"I thought all soldiers had insane sex drives. Isn't that the stereotype?"

"I'm not just _any_ soldier," Vegeta grumbled. "I'm way beyond that league. And there's nothing wrong with my sex drive." His eyes narrowed. "I just have selective tastes."

"Even if you dislike being sociable, even if you're uncomfortable wooing women. Don't you still want it? Need it?"

"All I need is to hear my enemies lamentations," Vegeta said drolly.

She sat the pliers in her lap, gazed at the wall. "Eight-nine. Don't you ever just want to take a woman without worrying about what others might think?" The penetrating question surprised her as much as it surprised him. "Don't you ever just want to know what a woman looks like under you as you make her moan? Don't you ever want to look at a woman and think she's the only one for you?" She stared out the window. "Don't men feel that way?" Because she _needed_ one, somewhere, to feel that way, or else there was nothing to live for.

"What?" Vegeta stammered with shock.

"Hey," she reprimanded, "don't tell me you don't have physical and emotional needs. Don't act," she threatened, "like I didn't make you cum, like you're some angelic sex-less creature apart from us all that doesn't need to sploosh once in awhile."

Vegeta blushed a fine shade of tomato red. "I don't feel anything I don't want to feel."

"You're full of shit," she just replied.

Bulma didn't understand why she was bedeviling him, poking him in sensitive places. She was just so tired of keeping things in. Of letting men brush her off. Of pretending that she wasn't a person with her own needs and feelings, surrounded by men who kept theirs from her. "All this talk about how unemotional you are, how you control everything, but you know what? I think you're full of emotion." She twirled the screwdriver in between her fingers. "That's why you're so uptight. You're _full_ of it. You're afraid to let it all out."

Vegeta was _aflame_ with indignity. If he could just reach through the phone and throttle her.… "I've had to work hard my entire life," he seethed, "for everything I have. With my power level, I should have been handed everything. Instead, I've had to fight for everything I rightfully deserve! Without that drive to fight, I would have nothing." _I am nothing._ It echoed and pinged around in his head loud enough that he wondered if she could hear it.

Bulma sat the screwdriver on her knee and frowned with concern. "You're not nothing, eight-nine. Your work life isn't just all you are."

"It's part of my profession," he disagreed. "We're soldiers. The culture consumes you. Competency ensures survival. Rank and power and survival and destruction are the only rewards. It…defines you completely."

"I don't think any less of you for being complex or emotional. You're more than just a soldier, after all. You're flesh and blood and some super sophisticated neurological wiring. You have needs beyond fighting things and being tough. All of us do."

Something caught in Vegeta's throat. He was a master of getting put in the dirt and getting back up again and again, but he felt like the time was soon approaching when he just wouldn't get back up, and he'd just lay there with the reality of his failures pressing him into the ground, and he'd cry and laugh and want to die.

"Did you ever explain that to your ex?" Her voice was tender over the line. "Ever tell her that it's hard for you to relax or relate because you're so consumed by work and how it defines you, the way you explained it to me?" He was silent. Bulma waited, and then frowned testily. "You're not less of a man if you talk about it with me. I'm not judging you. You work really hard and you're obviously really good at what you do. Take pride in what you've accomplished, not what you haven't, eight-nine," she ended warmly.

Vegeta felt feeling slam into him as he looked at the city, upside down.

"But you have to tell women what you're thinking and feeling," she said hotly, "or else we'll never know what's going on in those dumb heads of yours. You can't just keep compartmentalizing everything."

Vegeta finally had a breakthrough and put his feelings into words. "I feel a sudden desire to destroy this planet."

"Instead, eight-nine," she purred, gazing at her finely painted pink toenails and smiling, "I have an idea. And you're not going to like it."

The hair on his tail was already bristling.

"Consider it…therapy. You need to relax. You have all this stress and these demands of yourself, but tonight, I want you to forget them. I want you," her voice dipped low and teasing, "to jack off."

He scoffed loudly, but she ignored him, continuing.

"You should lay down in bed and just pump your dick in your hand and feel how fucking good it feels, jerk it the way it feels right. With nothing else in the world but a man and his dick."

"I am questioning my sanity for calling you. I have obviously become unhinged."

"We're talking about how you're going to take it out," she breathed, "and take it in your hand, and you're going to stroke it. And stroke it. And stroke it—"

Vegeta stiffened.

Everywhere.

"Until all you want in the whole world is to fucking cum."

Mortification roiled in Vegeta, and he rolled onto his stomach to better fill his lungs up with air and yell at her.

"Cum. And then tell yourself it's okay to _feel_ that."

His voice was tight. "I want to strangle the very last breaths from you." 

"Strangle your dick instead," she whispered, and then chuckled. "Do it and thank me later. As a…friend…I only want what's best for you. I want a full report tomorrow."

Vegeta was still aghast as she hung up on him.

His grip tightened around his phone, but then loosened, and it dropped to the comforter beside him.

He watched the skyline of the city, his elbows pressing into the mattress.

And he thought of his ex's face. The sharp chin. The shadow just under her broad cheek bones. The sharp, knowing eyes, the thick black hair that, come to think of, he'd never touched. He hadn't ever felt the compunction to.

Vegeta rolled onto his back, resting his hands on his stomach.

And then, slowly, his hand moved to the waistband of his pants.

And stalled.

He really couldn't remember what her skin felt like, or anything about her. All the memories of touching her were awash with his own anxiety. He'd just felt imposed upon. Hadn't enjoyed a second of it.

He cursed.

And then unbuttoned himself impatiently and grabbed his dick from beneath his underwear.

He considered the curve of his ex's ass, the way her hands spread on his thighs as she tried taking him in her mouth. Then remembering her look of discomfort and dislike, his dick softened.

He lashed out, knocking over the lamp with his foot.

He rolled out of bed and wandered to the window.

And rested his forehead against the cold glass.

" _You're going to take it out…and take it in your hand…and stroke it, and stroke it…."_

Experimentally, Vegeta allowed his hand to wander beneath his underwear. He sighed and closed his eyes. _"I_ _'_ _m in the bath. There are bubbles all over my naked body..._ _"_

Vegeta's apartment was quiet and still as he began tentatively pumping his dick to the memory of the woman's voice.

And when he came, breath catching and semen slick between his fingers, instead of feeling frustration or shame, he tugged the shirt off from over his back, wiped his hand off, threw the shirt into the hamper, and then stared out at the skyline with a rare poignancy.

He unlatched and threw open the window. _I_ _can do anything I want to_. And that husky, know-it-all voice, the chime of bath water, and the night that often contained them in its hands, he just felt it, the breeze sensual as skin and the lights of the city as optimistic as a woman's laughter.

…

Friday night at Spacey's, where the gimmick was, unimaginatively, space.

They were the first restaurant chain to make it off-world, and, naturally, the first taste of Earth's cuisine offered to the vast universe was burgers and fries.

"Mmm." ChiChi made a satisfied noise low in her throat, staring over Bulma's shoulder at something. Bulma looked behind her with confusion.

A few tables away sat a group of Saiyans.

Bulma rolled her eyes, turning back around in her chair and looking out from under her bangs sassily. "Really, ChiChi? What do you want with those idiots?"

"I just have a thing for tall, hunky, dark haired men," ChiChi whispered, licking her lips at the sight of them.

"You're married," Bulma reminded her.

"I can look if I wanna," ChiChi responded smoothly, sipping soda pop from her straw and blatantly ogling the men.

One bolted upwards from his seat, looking down at his stomach with his beefy arms stretched wide. "Damnet, you spilled beer on me," he roared as the rest of his table laughed uproariously.

The Saiyan began tugging off his spandex shirt.

ChiChi's jaw dropped, a wide grin stretching her face.

Bulma groaned. "What do you like about Saiyans, anyway? They're all brutes," she complained, popping a tater tot in her mouth. "They're like…the cavemen of the space age. 'Me hit thing. Me fight you. Me hungry." Bulma had fought off and let down a lot of suitors in her days as a hot rich girl, and though she'd never been approached by a Saiyan, she'd been at enough flash bar fights to feel extremely irritable toward them. There was only so many times a person could have a chair thrown over their head and not take it personally.

"Yeah, but I don't care about how smart they are," ChiChi said dismissively.  
"I just like to look at them."

Bulma gave her a stinky side eye, tearing a tater tot in two.

"You'll see. Once you're married and old like me, you'll appreciate a good show once in awhile, too." ChiChi's eternal irritation transformed briefly, expressive and giddy. "It's nice to feel like I could hit that if I wanted to. To flirt with them. To feel hot again. And when you're married like me, you'll be begging strangers to flatter you, too, because your husband never compliments you anymore." ChiChi's scowl deepened impressively.

"But…ChiChi." Bulma reminded her dumbly. "You _married_ a Saiyan."

ChiChi just shrugged. "He wasn't born there or socialized like one, though. I didn't get the full, romantic, meet-the-soldier experience. He's just another idiot to me." She chomped her fries hotly. ChiChi was still angry because her husband had turned down this month's time off to train with a bunch of Yardrats halfway across the galaxy.

Goku, ChiChi's husband, had been an errant, misbegotten Saiyan boy manning a one-man space pod, scouting Earth for resources before the United Intergalactic Council scolded the Saiyan government for sending child mercenaries as spies to allied planets. They'd been stiffly fined. It seemed the Saiyan government, no matter their bluster, wasn't immune to the shame of a good old-fashioned financial penalty.

As such, Goku had grown up on Earth as an Earthling until being recovered by the Saiyan Army when they'd installed a barracks planet-side, like so many new races the past twenty years. Goku'd been conscripted and went on a cycle of six month tours in which he eagerly got to fight stuff and briefly stop in to visit his wife, leaving ChiChi part of the proud club of women-who-married-their-flighty-adolescent-sweethearts-and-became-bitter-naggy-unfulfilled-wives.

"If he had been like those Saiyan dopes," Bulma conjectured, "he'd have been stationed on Earth for only six months and then left your ass."

"I woulda still gotten a piece of that ass, though," ChiChi assured her smugly as she leaned in to suck up her milkshake. "And then he'd have left me with Gohan and I'd _still_ be taking care of my baby boy all by myself. Look at that! Shit would still be the same."

"I don't get the appeal," Bulma deliberated. "I love to look at handsome men as much as the next woman, but Saiyans are too much trouble." Her nose wrinkled with distaste. "It'd be like trying to date an explosive. 'Oh hey guys have you met my boyfriend—boom' 'Honey lets go out and get dinner—boom.'" Bulma thought of how on and off she and Yamcha were. "I need something more stable than an explosive. Someone reliable."

"Yamcha is reliable," ChiChi interjected.

Bulma stared stonily.

Yamcha was a thing that wouldn't go away but was never there.

"You don't want reliable. You don't need reliable." ChiChi's voice rose with enthusiasm. "You need fast, and passionate." ChiChi always had a look of hard seriousness on her face even when she was being playful. She made a really good overbearing mother. "And Saiyans were designed for that by some benevolent sex god in the universe. They're like sex machines. All bulging, glistening muscles and beautiful hair and endless, _enthusiastic_ endurance…."

Bulma slipped another tater tot into her mouth and sighed. "I guess I could get on board for _that_." She stared at the Saiyans. One was choking on a fry and another was patting his back helpfully with enough force to knock a human into the next solar system. "But before you get them into the sack you have to deal with them in public. And they're all embarrassing. Loud, and they eat and drink the restaurant dry, and they get into fights no matter where you take them and gosh they probably don't even know how to read or write…"

"Bulma you're being kind of racist right now."

She frowned down at her tater tots. "If I think about the kind of man I want and need, the ways in which Yamcha doesn't work for me…" She stared up at the ceiling, looking for answers. "He never makes me a priority. I need someone who worships me," she explained haltingly. "I don't want to be someone's second choice anymore. I need to a man whose very reason for living is me. I need someone doting, generous, affectionate, someone who'd go shopping with me and not be a baby and act put out about it, and buy me a boat just because they love pleasing me, and not act like I'm a burden when they're working…"

"You might as well just buy a new vibrator." ChiChi rolled her eyes.

"I have plenty," Bulma corrected. "But Saiyans are too self-absorbed. I need a relationship to be about _me_ , damnet. I need a man, not a child. And I'm too much of a type A to bother butting heads with another type A." She waved her hand around dismissively. "I just need a man to sit back and listen to me give orders." The tater tot on the way to Bulma's mouth paused. "I need a whipping boy."

"Don't you know that means they like it rough?" ChiChi wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "A-type people who have to take control and be the boss all day want someone to dominate _them_ in the bedroom." She winked.

Bulma rested her chin on her knuckles, swiveled in her chair, and watched the Saiyans. They provided the restaurant amusement, at least. Half of them barely fit in their chairs, and even over the top 40 hits blaring over the radio, all she could hear were their boasts and double-dog dares.

ChiChi's phone alarm beeped. "Oh shit, I have to go pick up Gohan from the babysitters."

"Your dad's not watching him tonight?"

"Nope." ChiChi stood, smoothing her dress.

"When will I see or hear from you again?" Bulma said sadly.

ChiChi returned the sad look with one of her own. "I don't know. I'm sorry, taking care of Gohan just keeps me so busy…" 

"Being a Mom is the worst," Bulma whined. "You're always so busy. No one ever calls me…" 

"Now you're just making me feel bad," ChiChi snapped.

ChiChi leaned in to give Bulma a hug before making her way to the exit. Spacey's was crowded, hot, and loud, and Bulma was going to have to fight just to make it out the door herself. She stood and pulled the hem of her red dress back down her thighs, fluffing her hair and sighing.

As she waited at the edges for the crowd to clear so that she could walk out the door herself, she blew her bangs out of her face impatiently and sipped her milkshake.

And then locked eyes with a man who watched the fiasco from outside, a still and menacing silhouette leaning against the lamp post. _Another_ Saiyan. Spacey's was full of them this Friday night.

Her eyes ticked over him assessingly as the line out the door stalled. Ripped, with a jaw line and cheek bones like one of those impossibly handsome, ethereal Hollywood beings, and oozing infinite coolness like a fucking rock star. Well, ChiChi wasn't wrong. Some Saiyans were just ridiculously hot.

He was giving off all the signs of being completely aloof as he leaned away from the rabble with his arms crossed, but scrutinizing her without trying to hide it.

His expression didn't change whatsoever, but he didn't look all that impressed with her. Her eyes narrowed at him fractionally. To be fair, Saiyans didn't think much of anyone who wasn't also Saiyan, and even then it was an argument about power levels. They were a scrappy bunch.

The crowd in front of her began to move. Fucking Saiyans, they were all so conceited and holier-than-thou.

But his gaze had kind of heated, wandering briefly over her. Bulma's eyes widened with surprise. It wasn't the kind of checking her out by a man that made her feel icky, either. _"And when you_ _'_ _re married like me, you_ _'_ _ll be begging strangers to flatter you, too, because your husband never compliments you anymore."_ When was the last time she'd been so brazenly gawked at like a piece of meat? Here she was, a hot woman and a vagina in between her legs and everything, but she hadn't been ogled or catcalled since leaving the circles of the rich and famous. It was foreign, it was liberating, it was a man's attention on her for the first time in so long—

A super hot one that still managed to be completely, cooly, irritatingly indifferent to her. The crowd pressed from behind her, and suddenly she was in his direct line of site as she waited for the idiots to clear the door. For just a moment, she had nothing else to look at in the whole world but this Saiyan framed by the shoulders of those milling in front of her.

The crowd suddenly broke, and it pushed her towards him. The people loitering in front of her turned in opposite directions, depositing her into the freedom of the outside world, and Bulma felt the slick sweat cool in her dress as the breeze hit her.

Now directly in front of the other with nothing but empty space measured between them, Bulma, inflamed by the Saiyan's interest and his disinterest and his Saiyan good looks and most of all the memory of a stupid idiot who didn't look at her the same way whom she wanted to STOMP. ALL. OVER. KILL. KILL., she grew bold.

She put her lips to the straw of her milkshake, suggestively sucking with her pursed lips as she put one heel slowly in front of the other, and watched him with fearless interest.

His eyes narrowed, acknowledging her cues.

It was a confrontation.

A voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. But, oh, what did standards matter anymore. Truthfully? She'd bang the shit out of him.

She'd put her hand right where the blood-smeared hand-print was on his breastplate and then tug that long, upwards flame of hair down to her so that she could steal a kiss, slide her hand right down those washboard abs to slide underneath the waist of his spandex and possessively grab his long, hard….

And then she was walking past him, and she put her head high in the air, heels clacking on the sidewalk, nearly brushing him in the crowd. His eyes didn't leave her as he watched her with a scary and exciting kind of predatory absorption.

Something inside her flared with excitement.

And she turned her head over her shoulder to see him once more.

He still watched her, with dark, penetrating eyes.

She smiled, slow and suggestively.

His gaze got sharper.

She turned back around again and snorted with restrained giggles.

Bulma Briefs still had it!

The milkshake straw grew noisy and there was nothing left at the bottom. She tossed it into a trash can with disappointment.

…

Bulma was telling a complete stranger about the time she had surprised her boyfriend by ripping open a trench coat to reveal an expensive set of lingerie underneath, and her boyfriend had just sighed.

" _Bulma,"_ _Yamcha had began in that voice that made Bulma want to tear at her hair._ _"_ _I don't have time for this._ _"_ _He gestured behind him, to the desk in the living room, piled with paperwork. A laptop was open, a window open to his email. He could have been talking down to an employee that had shown up late again, or explaining an oft-explained rule to a toddler._ _"_ _I have work to do._ _"_

 _And then he'd held open the door for her and said, as if it dulled the sting:_

" _Thanks for being such a good friend._ _"_

"What the hell did he mean _thanks for being a good friend?_ " Bulma stomped down the ladder and snagged a tool from her box, shaking it furiously and fantasizing that it bludgeoned a certain someone.

"That he thinks of you as a friend," her stranger said pointedly over the sound of his crunching.

"I am not _just_ a friend. And I made that very clear with the tits bouncing out of my lingerie."

"He must have had a lot of work to do," her stranger offered indifferently, popping more chips in his mouth. But even her stranger didn't sound convinced.

"But I looked amazing. Even _if_ he had a lot of work to do. What kind of man could have turned me down?"

Vegeta snickered, cleaning the last bite of his dinner from his fork and shoving the plate away.

"It's not funny, eighty-nine," the woman snarled, which only made Vegeta's smirk crook higher. She was frantic now. "I'm a beautiful woman. I'm smart. I have a mile high sex drive. I, I put up with his shit. Why isn't he attracted to me?"

"Maybe you're not what he's into," Vegeta suggested.

Her scoff was loud and clear over the line. "You should have seen me. The prettiest crotchless teddy, shoving my boobs practically up to my chin. _Real_ silk thigh highs. I served myself up on a dinner plate. And no one ate me!"

"You're not selling yourself here," Vegeta laughed.

"Don't you make fun of me!" Bulma pouted. "It was..." Bulma tucked her hair behind her ears, grimacing. "Hard to endure."

"It's supposed to be getting _him_ hard." He rested his boots on top his kitchen table. "Unless," he smiled wickedly, "you're not much to look at?"

She gasped. "How dare you." Bulma shoved her gloved fist onto her hip.

And it struck her.

"Hold on," she demanded.

The phone grated through some static, and Vegeta frowned, eyes flicking at the screen of his phone with confusion.

And a picture text of a half-naked woman imposed itself over his screen.

His eyes widened.

Practically spilling from a lacy bra were the most round, creamy breasts Vegeta had ever laid eyes on in real life. An elegant collar bone spanned the luscious chest, and his gaze raked down, down the bare expanse of pale skin, tracing the cinched silhouette of her waist, to the low, frilly underwear peeking just over the mouth-watering mound of her pubis. The flight suit had been unzipped and hung off her hips, where the ribboned fingers of her underwear clung against each hip, but where the bottom edge of the picture, unfortunately, ended.

Vegeta's heart flatlined.

The kitchen chair scraped loudly as he looked around his dark apartment with paranoia. He put his hand over his face, massaging the days scruff. His hand slid over his eyes with a mixture of weariness and disbelief, propped up his heavy head.

Splaying his hand, Vegeta peeked between his fingers and gawked at the picture.

He sat rigidly in the kitchen chair, staring at his phone.

"Yesterday's was so much better," she assured him quickly over the line, as if she still had to convince him.

It wasn't the _lingerie_ that had redirected the blood from his brain to his cock.

"Perhaps he's just not interested in women," Vegeta suggested thinly. Carefully. Careful wasn't a known term in Saiyan nomenclature, however, and the statement was about as blunt and merciless as it gets.

Bulma startled. The memory was as vivid and palpable as if it were happening right before her. Driving in the rain, on her way to dinner. Spying Yamcha with his arm around another woman, under an umbrella in a curtain of rain. Clasping the woman's ass in his hands and laughing together before saying goodbye to her at the door of the restaurant where he and Bulma were to meet. Watching them in the rearview mirror until running into a parked car. Staring out the windshield for a long time.

Finally calling and canceling their date, feigning a stomach ache.

No, the issue wasn't that he didn't like women.

Her voice was tight. "I'd like to think I'm not _that_ inobservant."

Vegeta sighed. "Where I come from...in my line of work...sex is sex," he explained, struggling. Look at him, a success story doling out advice to the less fortunate. "Man or woman, it's always welcome." He thought of all the tours around the universe when he was young, all the unspoken physical relationships that his comrades guiltlessly indulged. But not him. He didn't know how to flip that switch, and it had cost him a few females in his time, including the persistent one that had gotten him in the sack but been so underwhelmed she'd given him up for an Earthling. His ex hadn't stomped on his heart, she'd stomped on his _pride_.

But Vegeta understood what it meant to be Saiyan. He was an arrogant battle-junkie as much as any other Saiyan. But somewhere along the way, self-consciousness had usurped the happy-go-lucky nature of a Saiyan that got to fight things. Contempt for himself had poisoned his relationships with other people. Intellect and strategy had malformed into self-doubt, single-minded purpose and emotion had turned inward and ransacked his direction. He was in a position of power in part because he was a neurotic strategist, and that kind of acuity was rare among Saiyans.

But no matter what, a Saiyan was united with their body in a closer way than any other race, and yet Vegeta lived in a cage in his mind. Sex and camaraderie were a part of him he should feel connected to as closely as blood and pride, because Saiyans were social creatures, because sex was second nature to a Saiyan. It was just another way Saiyans used their bodies, bodies preternaturally honed for strength, for speed, for endurance, for overwhelming displays of emotion that rode them hard...

"It's how we all get relief from the madness of battle and release our pent up natural aggression," he explained. "If he doesn't take it when you offer it," Vegeta explained in the cloaking darkness, "he doesn't want it."

And Vegeta felt there was only one reason a man would refuse a woman like her.

Because he was getting it somewhere else.

"When was the last time you got laid?" Her question was innocent, gentle, but he heard the emptiness in it, too, as if some understanding of her own inferiority was occupying her.

He hadn't bothered turning on the lights when he got home; Saiyan's saw supremely well in the dark. And yet the darkness of his apartment was overwhelming. It blanketed his vision, giving him the sense that it was just him and the woman's voice over the line.

In the thick of the dark, he leaned forward into her voice.

"It's been awhile," he forced, but his tone suggested it had been longer than that.

"Why not just release _your_ aggression then?"

Vegeta's eyes slid to the shadowed corners of his apartment. "I'm not like them," he tried explaining. It was half-hearted, even to him. "I can't...relax enough...around another. I don't like bothering with it, and it shows. And those who may be interested...are my colleagues. In my position, it's very hard not to find someone who isn't intimidated by that." But it wasn't them. It was him, Vegeta realized. He was the one with the issue. His fucking pride was like a wall that kept him from letting loose and getting laid.

Across the city, with growing certainty and determination, Bulma made a decision she didn't realize that she wanted—needed—to make.

Maybe to spite the stirred up memories, the realization that whatever she had with a man was not working and hadn't been for a very long time. Maybe because who she'd thought she was—a normal woman content with her life—had shattered, and now she was being forced to build herself anew by different rules. And here was this man, this stranger, who could be anybody...someone she could safely be herself with, not fear rejection from, whose voice she had heard reliably every night this week and she could _lose_ herself with...

She bit her lip, looked around the empty hangar from the bowels of the ship. "Well...what about right now?"

"Huh?"

"You have time to talk to me," she argued. "You _are_ talking to me. And you don't talk to anyone."

"Its easy to talk to you because you don't know me." His reply was clipped, as though he were resisting the trap he sensed she was laying. "This is...different."

"Well...you have time to cum right now, don't you?"

Vegeta's eyes widened.

"It's just me tonight, working overtime." She bit her lip. "I'm in the engine of the ship, and it's hot in here. So I could stand to take my coveralls off..."

She waited nervously.

There was a long silence.

"Go on," he finally said.

A smile stretched Bulma's face.

She slid down the engine bay wall with her lips twitching upwards conspiratorially. "My jumpsuit is already unzipped and around my waist. So that I could show you what I was wearing underneath it..."

"Do you always wear nothing under your flight suit?" The question had an edge of a dark taunt, hoping for a darker answer.

"Sometimes," she answered, and his lips curled up with approval. "I have a thing for lingerie. Push up bras, lacy bodysuits, crotchless underwear..."

Vegeta's senses sharpened with the image.

"They're my weakness," she admitted, but this time the confession held an edge, a ripple of flirtatiousness.

Vegeta looked down at the phone screen again, at the mouthwatering vision of her in her underwear, the creamy plane of her stomach that he could imagine trailing with his mouth as he held her by those hips. She was a woman most soldiers would be howling for. She was wasted on the lesser man. What _he_ would do to a woman like that...

A dangerous competitiveness curled in the pit of him, coiling to strike with black intent. He looked out over his shadowed apartment with the eager expression Saiyans got when hunting. "You're wearing that lingerie because you want somebody to enjoy it."

"No," she corrected him primly. "I wear it because _I_ enjoy it. But it'd be nice if I had somebody to share it with..."

"You shared it with me," he pointed out, half aware that his voice had grown deep and husky.

"Did you like it?"

"I approve," he said, every breath feeling looser and looser and his head spinning off just like the second a Saiyan freed the ki rampaging inside him. "I think I would just look at you and admire you for awhile before even putting my hands on you."

Bulma grinned happily, toeing her boot against the star ship engine. "Do. I am a beautiful woman, after all. You'll find yourself admiring me everywhere you look."

Vegeta slid further down in his chair, looking up predatorily through dark lashes, eyes dilated under his straight brows. "You can't expect me to just look at you for very long though."

"What would you do when you got tired of looking at me, eight-nine?" Bulma slid her hand down her side, smoothing the jumpsuit further down her hips.

"I'd grab those luscious hips, and I'd sit you on my kitchen table." He pulled his gloves off with his teeth. "And I'd wanna shimmy those pretty little panties off you, but I'd keep them on instead, just pull back the damp crotch of them. And I'd show you exactly how you deserve to be eaten."

" _He doesn't go down on me. He thinks it's gross._ _" "_ _That's a fucking shame._ _"_

Bulma threw her head back with a satisfied sigh, and she took her own gloves off, fingers trailing experimentally under the front of her underwear.

"I'd love it if you put your mouth on it," she sighed.

"I'd put my tongue in it, too."

Shock and lust made her belly flop. Was it embarrassment, was it excitement? And she ran a finger over her lips, imagining it might be this stranger's tongue, the short hair there brushing her fingertips.

"I really want to know what you taste like," Vegeta admitted, grabbing his shirt by the back of his collar and tugging it over his head. The cool air was shocking against his warm skin.

Her heart skipped a beat. It might have been the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her.

"Then taste it," she urged, and her voice didn't quite sound like the one she knew.

"I want to lick you real thoroughly, all the way up and down." Vegeta tugged his pants from their button and shoved his underwear down over the front of him in a hurry. His dick was already achingly hard, the skin silken against his palm. "Fuck," he bit out as his bare hand met hot flesh. He gave himself a second to breathe. Then he leisurely stroked the tip. "But I'd have to take some time just to bury my face in you."

Something about shucking control in some other scenario besides battle was fucking _exciting_. With someone he could be himself with, and yet someone else? His hand slipped down the length of him, and then back up, testing. "I wouldn't be satisfied until you came in my mouth, with your hips trapped in my hands."

Bulma bit her lip on a moan. "Good Kami," she commented wryly, and slowly, she sank two fingers inside herself. It should have felt wrong, in the middle of a massive star ship engine in the empty hangar where she worked, with someone she'd never even met.

Last time had just been foreplay compared to this. Last time she'd faked it anyway. This time was already more fulfilling than anything she'd done in recent memory. And naughty. God this was naughty.

"Eight-nine," she panted, "even if I cum with your mouth still on me, you better not stop there."

"I would never," he threatened silkily. Vegeta's head started rolling back on his shoulders, lolling on the back of the chair. It was just him, the dark, his cock in his hands, and the woman that was his to tease on the other line.

Her panties were stretched across her hand, confining her knuckles. "Should I leave my underwear on or take it off?"

"On," he informed her quickly. He arched his back slightly in his chair, stomach rippling, slipping his hand back and forth over the hot member in his hand. "I want you to keep it on."

"Okay." Her eyelids closed and she smiled.

And Vegeta began describing exactly how he'd pull the panties she wore to the side, and how he'd stand up, drawing his fingers over her as he did it. How he'd slowly nudge her with the tip of his cock until she whined for more. How he would teasingly, gradually push inside her. With her eyes clenched and her hands in her drawers, Bulma could feel exactly how hot the naked flesh of him was against her as he waited for her to adjust to his size, the soft, round head of him, how she'd be so ready and wet that the thick tip of him would begin to slide in and cause her to bite her knuckles as it flared wider, stretching her. Then he'd glide in and out against her at an angle, teasingly, thoroughly, to wrench out every inch of anguished pleasure before going any further.

Their breath caught, waiting, readying.

And then he thrust in all the way to the hilt.

She moaned, and he hissed in answer, his cock painfully needy with every rasp of skin against his palm.

"God I'm so wet," she told him secretively, and for all they knew it was just the two of them left in the world.

He was fucking her on his kitchen table, taking her with long strokes, and Bulma could already feel herself start to coil tighter, her fingers rubbing faster and thrusting harder as she imagined him there. She wanted to clutch him tight between her thighs as he drove into her, the hot skin of his sides velvet and caressing the insides of her legs as she hooked her ankles around his back, imagining his mouth on her breasts through the lace of her bra….

And at the sound of his husky voice on her walky telling her exactly what kind of depraved things he'd do just because he wanted her, how he wanted to be the one to make her cum, hard and loud, Bulma lost her grip on control. Her back arched, ramming her hips against her fingers as the orgasm that had coiled tight in her lashed free.

"Oh god, oh god," she cried out as she spasmed over her fingers, mouth parted.

Vegeta inhaled sharply as it took him, throwing his head back on the edge of the chair, and then he sprawled in his kitchen chair, wrung dry.

Alone,

in the dark,

Bulma and Vegeta both smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: There was so much I wanted to hit on in this chapter and I don't know that I nailed it. And then there was this thing where I have this whole damned story written but I keep rewriting certain scenes thereby pushing back updates for me and life and so on and so on...So I'm sorry. Please forgive me and love me unconditionally because I do this for free.

* * *

The most ill-tempered-looking wallflower at the fringes of the packed gym, Vegeta oversaw all the grunting, stinking, testosterone-fired Saiyans with a palpable air of complete and utter boredom. But over the sounds of weight-lifting soldiers and the intergalactic top 40 hits blaring over a radio somewhere, Vegeta just couldn't calm the thoughts buzzing irately around and around in his head. He was offended, naturally, that such a high-ranking, brilliant warrior like him had to babysit a gaggle of dimwitted soldiers, who were now bellowing, tone-deaf, to the upbeat pop song on the radio. Glorious leaders didn't rub elbows with the peons. And yet, deep down, the fact that he was given the task to stand there and look important was making him feel mighty smug, because he couldn't argue with looking important, even if the task itself was trivial. Today's leadership role, mixed with the sexual relief of last night's phone call, and Vegeta was practically oozing arrogance.

The other Saiyans seemed to feel it in the air and were doing their best to avoid him.

Vegeta was busy cursing his luck and also making sure to look mighty important when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He slipped it out irritably and glanced down.

 _Today's underwear,_ it said, above a picture that caused him to immediately flush crimson.

He jerkily looked around him for prying eyes. His stomach tumbled with panic, even as he was unable to tear his eyes away from the picture before him.

The back of her purple panties were cut suggestively over her round ass, her thighs luscious under it, signed at the bottom only with a winky face emoji.

In the thick of the chest-thumping and clueless Saiyans, Vegeta's dick flared rebelliously to life. Thankfully the groin protector of his uniform shielded his shame.

But with a euphoria and self-importance that couldn't be explained, Vegeta continued ogling the picture, smirking insolently.

* * *

Bulma smiled as she zipped up her jumpsuit and headed from the locker room out into the hangar. She waved and said hello, good morning to the other women streaming past her, jubilant enough to let out a little whistle and dangerously close to a " _zippity do dah, zippity day."_

She startled as her pocket vibrated, sipping coffee from her thermos as she slid her phone from her pocket, her boots thumping in the hall.

 _I want to put my face in it._

Bulma choked on her coffee and coughed violently.

"Oh my," she croaked, pounding her chest with her fist. Her disbelief—at her daring actions last night, at his acceptance—hadn't stopped her from strutting out of work with wet panties and a stupid smile stretching her face, or from sliding into bed and curling her toes under her sheets with a giggle, daydreaming wide-eyed into the thick dark before falling asleep with a feeling filling her chest. She'd sung a little tune in the shower this morning and made her lunch with a little prance in her step, and, just a few moments ago, glanced around the empty locker room before stretching her arm behind her to snap a pic of her magnificent behind.

Finally, someone recognized the perfection that was her ass.

She smiled helplessly, clutching her phone to her chest.

She could get used to this.

...

And she did. Each night, when the sun had sunk below the city skyline and night had stretched its fingers into every corner of their apartments, a phone might ring or a text message might ding and alert one of them in the hush of their apartments that they weren't alone. Each night was theirs and theirs alone, and theirs together, at first to bashfully flirt, mostly on his part, before jumping right into the escape that cocooned them from the perceived failures in their lives.

And eventually their intimacy crept from the nights into the days, in locker rooms or empty hallways or the enormous, vacuous engines of a starship whose thrusters would take it to distant sights all over the galaxy, when one might open up their phone to see a very gratuitous set of tits or a dick pic that could only make the two dummies that were on the receiving end of it happy.

...

"What panties are you wearing today?" Vegeta's voice dipped dangerously, striding down the hallway with his scouter pressed to his ear. The Saiyans who lined the hallway chatting as they ate lunch startled, watching the General's back with wide eyes.

"All black, but quite see through," Bulma purred, grinning upwards into the star ship drive train, which provided soundproof insulation and prevented trauma to her co-workers ears. "The best part is," she continued with excitement, "is when I bend over, the skinniest slip of fabric at the crotch," her voice dipped, " _barely_ covers me..."

"Why haven't I been sent me a picture?"

"Whoops."

"I'd say so. Tonight I want to see your hands underneath them, and I'm going to tell you exactly what to do with them. Are we clear?"

This was the second time he'd ordered her around and gotten kind of military on her.

It was _so_ hot.

"Crystal," Bulma replied breathlessly.

...

"I want to be on bottom this time."

Bulma lay on her back in an extra large shirt with a kitten print on the chest and her phone against her ear, her tone inarguably whiny.

"But if you get on top," her stranger cajoled, rough and dangerous and oh-so-hard to deny, "I can stroke the tip of it. Rub it right against your lips. And then you can straddle me and and slide right down it until you're stretched tight..."

Vegeta never knew how good he was at being descriptive until he started having phone sex, but he guessed any man was capable of dirty talk if they'd watched enough porn.

"Oh," Bulma sighed contentedly. "Yeah, I like that idea." She tugged her underwear off her legs with one hand and turned her purple vibrator to its lowest setting.

Bulma's phone then began to chime, and she glanced at it through dusky eyes.

ChiChi.

She ignored the call and put the phone back to her ear, rolling onto her knees and readying the vibrator between her thighs, the music on the radio murmuring from her nightstand. "Okay, I've crawled on top of you," she said with cheerful anticipation. "I'm straddling your thighs, just waiting for your instructions, big guy."

"Big? I like the sound of that," her stranger crooned. Vegeta's size—the size of him in all places—was a familiar theme in their late-night escapades. At least, what he'd alluded of his size. He hadn't outright _lied_ about how tall, how endowed, and how extraordinarily gifted at battle he was; he'd just stretched the truth in the imaginative spirit of their sexual capers. "Call me big again and maybe I'll give you what you want, once I've taken what I want for myself—"

Then the ding of a text—and then another ding, and another—

Bulma scowled and looked down at her phone.

ChiChi.

 _I'm free tonight, want to hang?_

 _Why aren't you picking up?_

 _Bulma Briefs!_

Bulma sighed forcefully through her nose, turned off her vibrator, and put the phone back to her ear. "Eight nine? Hold on."

Bulma's long claws typed quickly.

 _Busy tonight_

ChiChi responded rapid fire.

 _What?! YOU are busy?!_

"Gah!" Bulma typed furiously.

 _IM GETTING LAID LEAVE ME ALONE_

 _Oh. Ohhhhhhh_

"What the hell," said the man waiting for her on the other end.

 _ARE YOU BACK WITH YAMCHA?!_

"Goddamnet!" Bulma yelled right into the man's ear.

 _NO! LEAVE ME ALONE_

 _Fine. You don't have to all-caps me, jeez_

"Eight nine," Bulma said with restraint, enunciating very carefully, her knees digging into the mattress. Her finger lifted imperiously. "I am on top of you."

 _Wait…NOT Yamcha?!_

Bulma's eyes flicked from the screen of her phone back to her pink bedroom wall stoically. "And I am going to let you take from me exactly what you want. How do you want it tonight?"

"I don't want to be interrupted."

Bulma stared deadpan at her comforter. "Let me put your big, throbbing dick inside of me, eight nine," she said with false sweetness, flipping onto her back, her short hair falling back onto her sheets. Her arm was listless above her head on the rose-printed sheets.

There was a long pause.

Finally: "I'm listening."

"You're so big," Bulma tried. "…Uh, everywhere…."

Vegeta's eyes narrowed. "Hmm." He wasn't buying it.

The truth was, Bulma _really_ liked playing into the big buff soldier aggressor fantasy just as much as Vegeta. So it wasn't like she had to fake it or anything. She wanted to be **taken** , she wanted his dick and cum to fill her up in all its virile glory just like in her romance novels. She wanted to lay on a man's chest, spent, after hours and hours of mind-shattering sex, and curl like a cat on top of his rippled abs.

…Sometimes, when one of them had maybe drank a little too much wine or (in Vegeta's case) cheap beer, they'd pretend he'd just gotten off the battle field and was all sooty and the breeze was rippling his luscious hair against a backdrop of destruction and, like a princess, she'd greet him with an exultant "Oh! My hero!" And then promptly get taken doggy-style against her bed frame.

A sinister smirk stretched his face. "There you go," he encouraged her, patronizingly. "Keep it up."

"And you're such a bad boy. God," she blurted. "Just…so…..naughty. Bad boy."

"I am bad," Vegeta agreed, thumb stroking his chin contemplatively. "But you know what I'm really hungry for?"

Bulma blinked at the ceiling. "What?"

"Making you pay for your interruption tonight. So I want you to lie back and spread your legs, and I'll only let you cum once you've apologized to my satisfaction."

Bulma stuttered.

She set her jaw with determination, and, with a decisive click, turned her vibrator back on.

"Fuck me," she commanded.

...

And the hunky aggressor-sexy princess dynamic worked, because Bulma wanted to be adored and what better way to receive the adoration she so deserved and desired than to be the object of a super hot man's fantasy?

"I'm going to tie you up and blind fold you today." The voice on the other side of the line brooked no argument.

Bulma grinned, toeing off her shoes. Closing the front door behind her and tossing her keys onto the counter, Bulma wanly set a pot of water to boil on the stove. Her cat ran over eagerly to greet her. "Oh?" The smile was private, adoring, even as her tone was playfully haughty. "You're getting confident, pulling something like that."

"I know what you like." His voice was smug. "You want to be manhandled. And I'm just the person to do it."

She watched the water simmer, mirth dancing in her eyes as she rested her head against the wall. "You look for any excuse to manhandle a person. Is that a military thing?"

"It's a me thing."

"I can't say that I dislike it," she assured him.

"I think you like when I take control."

"I'm not trying to hide it."

"Good. Because I'm not going easy on you."

Bulma stirred the pot, a trace of a shiver skimming her neck as she smiled. The heater kicked on with an aging, slow commencement, humming and clacking quietly in the small laundry room just off the kitchen. She stepped on something as she made her way to the sink, something slippery that caused her stride to slide a little, and with barely a cursory glance she kicked it out of the way with her toes. The dusty picture of her and Yamcha that had fallen from the fridge months ago slid under the refrigerator.

"You can't see or touch, but suddenly you feel my dick at your mouth. What are you going to do?" She poured the cooked noodles into the colander, her phone shoved up against her ear with her shoulder. She could feel the knot between her shoulders from work begin to loosen with the sound of his voice. She really liked his voice, the rough sensuality of it, the emotion in it despite his cool front that always had him tipping one way or the other, from being outright flabbergasted and prudish to heatedly confrontational. He was fun.

"Open my mouth," she replied. "I want it to slide between my lips real slowly, and then you'll feel my tongue slide over the tip—"

Bulma suddenly tripped over her cat, holding the colander tightly to her chest to avoid spilling her dinner. "Scratch!" She yelled, and he bolted away, nails slicking against the linoleum. "Sorry," she sighed. "Now where were we?"

Vegeta tsk'ed."If you're not going to give me the proper respect, you don't get the reward."

And then Bulma lost her top at what she'd later realize, with humility, was anger at being denied a dick in her mouth.

"What?!" Bulma glowered at her yellow kitchen walls. "That's _bullshit_."

Normally Bulma was much more…passive…in their (fictional) sex life, because she just adored feeling wanted by a man whose single purpose in life in an insular moment was her. _Me, me, me._ Could her ass make a man crazy with lust? Could her tits move mountains and sway affairs of state? Yes. Yes they could, in this world they'd crafted. He'd be licking up her legs one moment and reciting sonnets about her pussy in the next, every night, just because he couldn't get enough of her. And her phone sex partner must have been cock blocked for _awhile_ , because he had a _lot_ of ideas of things he'd like to do with her.

And like any proper, swooning maiden, Bulma wanted to be _taken_ , fiercely, possessively, passionately. A woman didn't know what she was missing until it was gone, and she was enduring quite the dry spell. And so she wanted to be consumed with passion and taken with lusty fervor.

Except today.

Today, Bulma had had a bad day at work. Today, she was reminded of her tenuous and expendable position in a world that didn't care if she succeeded or not—or was even alive and kicking. Today she had been told to basically put out or get out by her boss, and as she'd walked out the double doors of a factory that would chew her up forever if she let it, she'd felt an overwhelming isolation overcome her from all sides. The night sky, blanched violet from the city's light pollution, was unwelcoming in its sharp coldness. She was one face out of thousands making their way home from the industrial district. A face she'd once been so certain was so breathtakingly gorgeous that no man could resist her and women wanted to be her, was now a face that hundreds of dirty, cross-eyed, balding factory workers ignored on their way home, who'd probably only care to give her a generous helping of hostility and resentment if they knew she'd been rich and famous in the first place. The fact that she was no longer important was immediate and inescapable tonight.

This former socialite and heiress was a nobody now, penniless and inheritance-less, with nothing to offer but a passing knowledge of space travel.

Bulma was really entertaining a pity party tonight.

And then, when she'd gotten to her apartment complex, she'd clumsily walked right into the front door, smacking her forehead against the glass and giving herself a red mark on her forehead, and when she'd unlocked her mail box, there was a past-due bill and date for shut-off awaiting her, with rent due next week. And to cap it all off, she'd been surprised by a text from Yamcha— _cue vomit noises_ —as she'd trudged up the stairs. He'd left his watch at her place and wanted her to drop it off in his mailbox, too busy, sorry. There was no mention that he'd left it there _eight months ago_ or a hey how you doing I haven't spoken to you in TWO. WHOLE. MONTHS.

There was a man whose voice tonight fought the shitty mood that was bubbling up from the most sour parts of her guts. There was just this thing that he hadn't been introduced to formally yet, and that was, uh, her temper.

Tonight, she needed relief from what she was starting to believe was the downward march from the peak of a life. And tonight Bulma Briefs wasn't going to beg anyone for anything. If she expected a cock in her mouth, than by kami, she'd get a cock in her mouth. She was Bulma fucking Briefs. How did everyone keep forgetting that?

"Maybe I feel generous and I'll negotiate the punishment," her phone sex partner was saying. "I'm sure we could come to some compromise, if you'd get on all fours and beg for it."

Bulma's shoulders inched up to her ears and and she flushed red with anger. "I'm not compromising shit. Eight nine," she warned him testily, "I'm getting what I want tonight. And I'm not taking any of your lip to get it."

Vegeta gaped with surprise and tried to regain control. "You're getting awfully uppidy—"

"So just shut the hell up!" Her voice was stern in the kitchen. "I reject your negotiation and demand _your_ surrender. So get the hell out of your clothes. I want you naked and I want you to sit the hell down so I can figure out what I want to do to you." Bulma watched the noodles steam in the colander from probably the power of her glare alone. "How about that?"

Silence.

And then:

"Holyshityouaresohot."

"Like that?" Bulma smiled coyly, anger dissipating, leaning against the counter and folding her free arm over her chest, phone coddled against her ear. She felt the anger in her chest unfurl and relax. "Maybe _you_ should be the one tied up and blindfolded."

"I don't think so," he answered flatly.

"Oh, I think you might find that you like it rather well."

"I doubt that. I don't willingly let my adversaries restrain me or take advantage of me." He rolled his eyes and chuckled at the idea.

"But what if _I_ tied you up?"

There was silence.

"You can't see, or touch," she continued softly, putting the spoon to her mouth to hide a giddy smile. "But suddenly you feel my tits at your mouth..."

"Okay," Vegeta gave in roughly. "Just once. And you can't tell anybody."

Bulma burst out laughing.

"You're ruining it," he complained snappily.

"I am not. Just, just hold on." But the whopping laughter wasn't coming to a stop.

Vegeta's patience was unraveling. "See, this is why _you_ should be tied up and blindfolded. And _gagged_."

"Keep talking like that and I'll take out my paddle," Bulma warned grimly.

Another pause. "...A paddle?"

She waited, smiling serendipitously, feeling like at last she'd found her calling. Wouldn't ChiChi be amused to know it was phone sex?

His voice was both incredulous—he was so _uptight_ about some things—but curious. "What, do you have like a whole arsenal of sex toys over there?"

"Maaaaybe. Wanna find out?"

And suddenly the whole thing came to a halt.

Vegeta stalled. He blinked at the walls across from him in the dark. Did she mean it?

It was…it was…

A nightmare. An intoxicating offer. He could have her just the way he was pretending to. Right now. Would she be willing, after meeting up, just to fuck? If he could even function or get it up in front of her. He looked away with embarrassment. This was all so sudden. Tonight? Could she meet tonight? Where should he suggest meeting? Was a restaurant too gauche? He glanced around his apartment with his heart beating thunderously in his ears. Should he clean up? Should he take a shower?

But seeing each other would complicate what was otherwise something he really didn't want to make real and make vulnerable to reality, where he was always getting shit on and what if she didn't find him attractive or he broke her heart and...

"Don't sweat it." The woman dismissed his whole crisis easily. "I was just teasing. But I do get to tie you up tonight. That's what you get for questioning _my_ authority. So you're tied up to a chair and blindfolded, no doubt painfully regretting that you can't see my beautiful, luscious body." Bulma smiled with newfound confidence. "You can't touch me. You can't kiss me." She blushed a little. "You can't speak to me. And when I count to three, I want you to be hard for me. And I'm going to sit the fuck down on that dick, and ride you."

There was a bunch of scrabbling over the line that sounded like things being knocked over and someone running into a wall, but Vegeta just said, "Holy shit I'm so fucking hard right now."

"Are you ready?"

"Of course I'm ready," he snapped, as if the question were an insult. He was a Saiyan! "I was born ready."

"Good." She smiled smugly, tossing the noodles leisurely into the sauce. And then leaned tiredly against the wall, dragging her hair back from her eyes with her fingers, a small smile mischievous at the corners of her mouth.

She didn't need to touch herself tonight. Tonight, she just needed to have an impact on someone.

Even if it was just making a stranger cum.

"One… Two…."

* * *

Her boss watched her apathetically.

Bulma stammered. "You can't be serious."

Her boss sighed, scratching notes on paper. "You're the daughter of Dr. Briefs. You should be able to handle this."

Day in, day out. Indignity, ahoy. Since in the blink of an eye she'd been made an outcast among the other debutantes. Since her father and mother had sold the suddenly imploding family business and taken off on a starship cruiser to distant and tropical planets to lay out in the sun and go on intergalactic safaris and enjoy their retirement. Since she'd been severed from life as she'd known it, Bulma'd been made a pauper and had had to _work_ for a living. Yamcha, sweet, guileless Yamcha, had grown conniving in order to survive the upper echelon, and then overnight he'd become the one who held all the power and he'd bailed, too. And now no one showed her any kindness, she'd only received postcards from her parents for the last year, and she had no leverage with Yamcha or her ungrateful, slimy boss….

Bulma felt her eyes heat.

And now she was going to cry in front of him.

There was no bottom of the barrel of shame, evidently.

"Yes, I'm the daughter of Dr. Briefs," she choked. "A fact you bring up only when it's convenient for you."

Bulma no longer talked back. She knew better, having learned the hard lesson when they'd been ruined publicly. Lead men hadn't taken well to her demands for control and special treatment. And even if this was a booming city and she was the daughter of the world's most famous scientist, they didn't want to babysit some mouthy heiress who'd never worked a day in her life. In order to make ends meet, Bulma had learned to be complacent and meek.

"I deserve a pay raise."

Her boss looked up at her slowly. And then sighed. "You know I would if I could..."

"Then I want to helm the project," Bulma said, and the lead man looked at her with surprise. "I'll keep my pay if you give me this chance," she continued. " I don't just want to turn wrenches. I want to design." Bulma's chest filled with new purpose. "And if you give me the project, I'll win." She leveled a look of absolute certainty at him. "I win, you win."

Her boss sighed again and looked down into his clipboard.

"You know that's out of my control—"

"And you'll be short fame and fortune, one military-grade star ship engine, and an engineer if you don't."

Her boss swallowed.

For the first time in her life, Bulma didn't want to use her family name as leverage. Right at this very moment, she wanted to stand up by herself. But the world needed to be reminded, just one more time. "You get Dr. Briefs' daughter designing your ships if you do."

"Tomorrow morning." He didn't blink. "A 10 am interview with the buyer. That's the most I can do."

She nodded crisply and strode out of the room, without being struck by lightning by an act of god because, for the first time in a very long time, she'd stood up for herself. And only when she was taking the stairs up into the hangar two at a time did she allow herself a moment, a brief grin, because this time someone had stood up for Bulma—she had.

She felt like she could do anything. She felt like a million bucks.

And she pulled out her phone as it vibrated.

 _Can I call?_ It read.

 _Yes,_ she answered the universe.

* * *

At some point they'd tightwalked and then marched right over a fine line in the sand that separated "Strictly Sex" and "Relationship." What kind of relationship? Well, neither of them were even aware of the transformation, and since their goings-on were highly secretive—except when Vegeta dirty-talked her at work and made all his soldiers want to drink bleach—and except that ChiChi kept pestering her now about who was this guy she was fucking and had told Eighteen all about it—and except that Bulma had told all her co-workers that she was having a fling with a very hot soldier, earning their friendly and jealous ire—there was no one to hint to them that things were getting serious, no one to poke them and say, "Uh, are you guys, like, a thing now?" and point to the mounting evidence of whatever was between them that might be weird or kinky or just plain sad which was now growing into…well, a well-rounded, mature, long-distance relationship from two very immature people.

Just one that revolved around sex.

"I want it," she moaned desperately.

"I know you do," he assured her, his own voice tight with need. "You can't have it yet."

"Please," his woman whined, breathing hard.

He pumped himself furiously. He was violently close. His voice was low and demanding. "Beg for it."

"Please," she pleaded, crying out. "Please!"

But she was already giving in, with the swell of a rushing tide breaking over sand.

"Fuck!" Vegeta came, spilling himself on his thighs and hand.

"Fuck!" Bulma's eyes rolled up, her back arched as she came around the vibrator, hard.

The pair took a moment to learn to breathe again. The silence on the line was cozy between them.

Finally, Bulma sprawled out on her bed, raking her fingers through her hair and laughing deep in her throat. "I'm going to need you to do that one again tomorrow."

Vegeta tossed the sticky tissues in his kitchen trash, slinking through the dark apartment. "Like it that much?" He asked with his typical conceit.

She liked his bravado, honestly. It was charming.

"I have something of a big interview tomorrow." She smiled lazily, needling her pillow with her toe, the fuzzy aftereffects of pleasure making her body heavy. "I could use a bottle of wine or four when I get home, after the day I expect to have."

"Moving up in the star ship business?"

Bulma scowled at her ceiling with determination. "Finally."

He opened his fridge, peering in. "What are you going to wear to it?" His voice dipped conspiratorially.

"Blue," she purred, and his cock jolted. His favorite color, and they both knew it. "A blue thong, lace at the hips, but just a triangle of fabric at the crotch. Lace so fine," she assured him throatily, "you could open it easily with just your teeth."

He leaned against the kitchen counter. "I'll put my tongue all over it tomorrow." His eyes narrowed with deadly intent. "Then I'll peel those underwear back and slide my tongue over those pretty lips, gripping your thighs…"

"Kami yes," she moaned, feeling the electric tingle start up again from below, and she buried her hand in her hair before dropping her arm heavily above her head on the plush comforter. "But I have to get ready for bed now," she said with disappointment. "And I have a stupid event I have to go to this weekend that will take up all of my Saturday..."

"Yeah." Vegeta stared at the unpalatable frozen dinner lying like a rock on his kitchen counter. "I still have to eat."

"Well, eat. Take care of yourself. We'll talk tomorrow, at least."

"Good luck."

A smile curled her face, making her look the spitting image of a teenager with a head full of romantic fancies. "Thank you." She leaned her head against the wall dreamily. "Don't forget you have to pick up your dry cleaning tomorrow."

"Shit. Thanks for reminding me."

"Good night," she sang softly.

"Affirmative," he replied.

And then they drifted into a companionable silence, neither of them pressing the button to end the call.

And for a moment, Vegeta imagined himself reaching out, and touching her.

It took another moment for either of them to hit the button and hang up the line.


	4. Chapter 4

Vegeta was the kind of person that no one got along with.

"I won't do it," Vegeta grit.

"What do you mean?" The captain stuttered. "But the Commander ordered you to."

"Did I stutter, or are you just slow?" Vegeta folded his arms over his chest and looked away huffily. Why should he give a shit about the star fleet, so long as it got him from Point A to Point Blowing Shit Up? "I'm not fraternizing with this human."

"But—" The officer attempted once more, but with a tone of defeat.

"Tell him I'd rather throw up and eat it. Idiot," Vegeta muttered, spinning in his office chair, and whether the insult was directed at the Captain or the prospective hire sitting in the next room, the Captain didn't care to know. At the moment, the only thing the Captain Elite was capable of processing was his fantasy of shoving Vegeta's face into a pile of shit.

…

"What?!"

"I apologize. He's incapacitated, for the moment. And for the moments after that. Basically, just forever." The Saiyan cleared his throat.

The hulking Captain Elite was hard pressed to admit that even _he_ was intimidated by the small woman standing before him. Standing there with her fist balled at her side, blueprints clutched in the other, he wouldn't be surprised if she started to spit fire.

The Captain wanted to bail right now more than anything else in the world, just, duck right out of work and maybe even Earth altogether.

It should have shamed his Saiyan pride, but instead he just jabbed his thumb behind him and said, "Let me go find someone else who can conduct this interview for you."

"Yeah, you better," Bulma muttered under her breath, watching the door close behind him. "Fucking Saiyans."

…

But it didn't get any better.

Two wild-haired Saiyan soldiers stared at her with confusion, clipboards clutched in their giant hands like props someone had stuck into their meaty fists at the last second before pushing them on stage.

"Look, can we hurry up here?" One of them just came right out and said, clipboard waving around forgotten in his hand. "We've got somewhere to be."

Bulma glanced at the clock behind them above the door of the General's office, the same clock whose hands she'd watch pass from 10:30, to 11:30, and now tick past their lunch break at noon.

This interview for a temp position for a Saiyan star fleet engineering project had been her big break. This had been her chance to show everyone!

Instead, her interviewer had bailed. She still didn't know what that was all about, but she'd overheard some Saiyans outside the door gossiping about a brawl in the gym and could put two and two together.

Then the General refused to follow up with her.

Then she had to wait for the Captain to scramble to find someone, anyone, in the whole Saiyan Military Complex else willing to do the job.

Now there were two blockheaded Saiyans standing in front of her, and they didn't seem in any hurry to hire someone for a project and a concept that they themselves didn't understand.

One of the two Saiyans before her cleared his throat, glancing at his watch dramatically, signaling to the Earthling that she should scurry away now with the shooing motion of his clipboard.

Which was a real shame, because Bulma had very little patience on a good day.

Aaaaaaand Bulma had had enough.

She rocketed from her chair and erupted, not in the kind of way a couple sticks of dynamite might deface a mountain, but like a star collapsing in an enormous, fiery supernova and obliterating itself in a sensational, self-important meltdown.

"Let me explain something to you," Bulma issued from between her teeth, threatening them with her pointer finger. The two Saiyans watched it cautiously, unsure if Earthlings could use ki. "I'm the daughter of the very man who made it possible for you dimwits to settle on Earth. And even if I wasn't, I come _way_ overqualified for this job."

The Saiyans believed her. Despite her lab coat and her heels, the Earthling looked like at any moment she'd leap forward and snap them in half.

"You think I want to work here? _Please_. I could do this in my sleep. Give me a wrench and a hammer and I could tune your fleet blindfolded. Now imagine that I actually _care_. That I'm putting effort into it. That I'm designing your ships. Tinkering with the foundations, enhancing them, making them superior in every way to everyone else's. If you want to have the galaxy's best star navy, then you'll hire me. If you want shit and loose bolts and torque that, like your dicks, you just can't get up, then you'll let me walk out that door. But we both know what Saiyans want: they want the best. And I am the best." She glared up at them. "Got it?"

The two Saiyan Elites stared at her, dumbfounded.

"You're hired," they said in tandem.

"I like your attitude," one said.

"You'll go far here," the other one added.

Bulma blinked. "Wha—?"

"Congratulations," they offered, thrusting out their hands, and in a daze Bulma shook their enormous hands before reality settled in with the hop skip and leap of her heart. "Ohmygod, yes!" And she clutched her blueprints and hopped up and down with excitement.

The Saiyans stifled a reactive flinch as she leaned in, but it was only to share a broad smile and a word of advice. "Now," the woman purred cheerfully, "you can go tell that tight-assed General to eat a dick."

"Uh, yes, ma'am," the Elites said.

And they turned right around to go gleefully tell him.

…

Vegeta was _not_ a paper pusher. Vegeta was a weapon of war, not a sniveling, puny office drone.

He was to be unleashed on stubborn colonies to cause mass destruction. He was a throat ripping, cage rattling predator to be released for the biggest, baddest missions. His name was to be whispered with reverence by his superiors and stuck in everyone else's throat with fear. _Vegetaaaaaa—_ the crowd goes wild,and a string quartet would begin its ominous dirge as he swaggered in.

Need a maelstrom of fire? Enjoy the woody scent of cinders and the hot, sharp scent of ozone that follows a shot of ki? Or just need to get rid of a pesky dictator sitting on a throne who refuses to play nice with the Intergalactic Alliance? Why, call Vegeta, General of the Saiyan Special Forces! If you need something to scare the shit out of a planet, or if you fantasize about world leaders surrendering as they shake in their boots and wipe sweat from their foreheads with their lacy kerchiefs, then Vegeta is your man!

And in small print:

Now for hire for the most mundane tasks.

"This is exactly your problem," his commander was screaming at him. "You don't play well with others. There is no 'I' in 'TEAM', Vegeta. 'Vegeta' isn't a synonym for 'TEAMWORK,' either. It's not always about you."

"No shit," Vegeta's own taunt echoed through the corridors. "Unlike you, I'm literate."

"Hoooo, baby," came a whisper from the group of Saiyans pressed against the door, listening and chewing their nails with worry.

Outside, Raditz, Fasha, Nappa and Toma crouched against the door with their ears pressed against the wood, trying with difficulty to make room for each other. It wasn't easy, given that even alone they had trouble fitting through the door. And so pressed awkwardly against the other, they listened to the imminent demise of their leader approach on death's heels.

Fasha was wincing, and Nappa was shaking his head, and they were all thinking things were pretty serious when the Commander of the entire Galactic Saiyan Army was screaming dictionary definitions at you.

"Is the General going to make it out of there alive?" Raditz asked with a note of worry.

"The question is, is the commander?" Toma posited.

"This isn't good," Fasha said.

Vegeta wasn't going to accept this. Not complying with a direct order from the Commander was a one way ticket to Fucked Town, but Vegeta didn't swallow correction easily. The more discipline he received, the further he pushed the limits of his superior's rules. And neither was the Commander going to just let Vegeta's disobedience go, not after the last time, nor the time before that. Vegeta had been easily beating out competitors at the top of the Shit List for awhile.

Someone in that room was going to have to learn a very hard lesson in humility.

"We're all fucked," Raditz groaned.

…

"The General is too good for _me_?"

ChiChi looked around for a paper bag to hand to Bulma to breathe into. She looked like at any moment the seams would start ripping on her dress as she grew to ten times her size and started punting hovercars, a hair's breadth away from climbing the Galactic Empire State Building, swatting at helicopters, and munching on screaming passersby like potato chips.

"Goku said he wasn't surprised," ChiChi murmured, scrutinizing her fresh aubergine fingernail polish. "He said all the higher ups act like they're better than everyone."

"I have never been so humiliated at an interview." Bulma's jaw was clenched so hard it looked like her teeth would shatter and shoot right out of her mouth. "And I am a woman who never thought she'd have to work a day in her life, and so even the best interview is a degradation!" She was practically beating her chest now with her freshly manicured fist. She had chosen a shade of hot pink, effeminate even in her ball-shriveling rage. "I shouldn't have to grovel."

"They hired you, didn't they?" Eighteen lay motionless with her feet on the coffee table and a glass of wine cupped carefully in her own french tips. "That's what counts."

"It was a pity hire," Bulma muttered, staring down at the carpet with humiliation. "They didn't care to hire me in the first place, the way they just left me in that room to rot. Me! Bulma Briefs!"

"Saiyans _don't_ pity," ChiChi reminded her. She leaned forward to uncork another bottle of wine, and topped Bulma's glass off generously.

"One could argue that they don't feel emotions at all, only the instinctive need to eat, fight, and sow their seed," Eighteen inserted drolly. "Are they even fully evolved?"

"No, Saiyans don't take pity," ChiChi continued on. "They demand only the best, and they won't even say thanks. That's just how they are." ChiChi's face darkened and her fists clenched. "No thanks at all. Even if they beg you and beg you and beg you to let them put it in you know where," ChiChi glowered, the air rippling crimson around her, "and you finally give in."

Bulma and Eighteen did their best to avoid her gaze.

The women all took a long draught of wine for very different reasons.

Bulma's body finally uncoiled in defeat, and she slumped in her chair, placing her bare feet on the coffee table with twin thumps. "When I get a chance to meet that General I'm going to wring his neck."

"He'd probably like that," ChiChi grumbled. "In my experience, Saiyans like it when you threaten them."

Eighteen's pale blue eyes widened. "Suddenly your relationship makes so much sense now."

ChiChi cast a look of burning ire at Eighteen. Choosing to ignore the comment, she turned to Bulma.

"Speaking of. You're going to the wedding tomorrow?"

Bulma groaned, sliding further into her chair until she was almost pooling onto the floor. "Normally, I like weddings," Bulma whined. "I get to dress up. I get to chat and drink champagne and eat off fancy tableware. I miss good tableware." She sighed wistfully. "But there's just something awful about rubbing elbows with people who don't worship me anymore." Bulma's sarcasm turned sour. "Listening to their drivel is going to be the death of me. I'm going to have to play that drinking game where you take a shot every time someone talks about their summer home or where they're investing their money. Chug! Chug! Chug! When a rich girl does that giggle when a man hits on her." Bulma huffed, toeing the paper shopping bag full of baby clothes that ChiChi had bought. "That circle is just absolutely boring now that I'm not a part of it. Rich bastards, and all their rich people problems."

ChiChi broke the following silence with a sigh. "Why not just call your folks, Bulma? Wouldn't it be good to talk to them?"

Predictably, Bulma slapped her hand on the chair arm. "Absolutely not."

"Surely they'd lend you some money and help you out?" ChiChi asked tenderly. "I mean, your parents are flighty, I'll give you that, but even if they decided suddenly to pack up and go sightseeing the universe, it's not because they don't love you or whatever."

No, Bulma's parents adored her. That much was true. But they were flakey and rich and in love and concerned only about each other post-retirement, and goodness, shouldn't they be? Shouldn't Bulma, a grown ass adult, be able to make it on her own without them? "I have to show them I can do it on my own."

"Your parent's never told you you had to do it from a cardboard box in an alley," ChiChi said edgily.

"I'm Bulma Briefs, star ship engineer," Bulma said saltily into her wine cup, and the women sighed silently into their own cups at the familiar deflection. "I can do anything I set my mind to."

"Yeah, well, here's to Bulma Briefs." ChiChi said snarkily, tipping her wine glass in her friend's direction, whose blue hair was falling over her eyes as she slumped moodily in the chair. "May this job bring you success," ChiChi continued with dry disbelief, "and the wedding tomorrow deposit a man into your lap as charming as you are."

…

Vegeta glowered death at the bride and groom.

One weekend. That's all he got. One precious weekend in one long solar revolution when he absolutely wasn't working and that he knew with certainty was _his_ _,_ because he was an elite Saiyan warrior and he deserved it. He deserved so much that he never received!

It's not like he had anything planned that weekend. It's not like he went hiking mountaintops or tasted new and fine cuisine or even rented a movie. It was just the principal of the thing, that someone was still able to dictate to _him_ where he had to be. And because the whole battalion was going, and more importantly because Vegeta was hanging onto his rank by a thread, Vegeta had reluctantly, sourly made an appearance.

At least there was an incentive waiting tonight, wrapped up like a gift in lace. He'd received only one picture this weekend, of lacy panties stretched across flesh shamelessly.

 _I'm going to eat it until you're screaming,_ he'd replied, to which she'd messaged back, _Hold my thighs up to your face like my pussy is the goddamned water of life!_ _,_ and he'd smiled and chuckled perversely, feeling warm with some feeling he didn't pay much attention to, before he'd noticed his soldiers had all stopped what they were doing to watch him. Vegeta had grown red with embarrassment, barked at his soldiers to spar with some goddamned deadly intent or just keel over and die and save him the effort of killing them, and returned to his rigid stance against the wall.

But today he hadn't had a chance all day to check his phone, nor would he have time to tear an orgasm from her throat with his superior sexual Saiyan prowess. _That_ was what he lived for these days. There was nothing in the world right now that made him feel more invincible. _This_ he deserved, he told himself smugly each night, his head pillowed on top his arm, his bed unnaturally soft and welcome as he replayed her moans round and round in his head and clutched the memory of her soft laughter close in the dark.

None of that was on the menu today. No, instead, he'd been gussied up in his military best, boots and breastplate and medals gleaming, and he'd dragged his feet to, of all things, a _wedding_.

An Earthling and Saiyan alliance. Vegeta rolled his eyes at all the sentimentalism, at the poor pairing of a strong bloodline diluted with an anemic, alien one. This world was making all his soldiers soft!

The vows had been said, the Saiyan side of the aisle had erupted into raucous cheers and whistles, and now the strange brew of Saiyans and Earthlings were standing around, stuffing their faces and chatting, struggling to make their voices heard over the live music.

Every now and then, someone would come up to him and try to small talk.

It took everything he had in him not to rip the hors d'oeuvres out of their hands and stuff it neatly down their throats.

So he just skulked around the edges of the crowd, glowering, relying on the intimidating mien he'd honed all these years to scare them away. So far it had been a great success. Most of the people who sidled up to chat backed away with their hands up with just one glance. He took great pride in it. That's how miserable his life had become here.

He'd even successfully avoided socializing with his team, who huddled around a group of fawning humans, flexing their biceps and smiling toothily at some human women. Despite his own misgivings about Earth, his team had been elated when they'd learned they were to be stationed here. They'd prepared by shoving their pockets full of condoms and increasing their already mushrooming drinking stipend.

Fasha's eyes darted over her shoulder, and Vegeta stiffened peevishly. He'd been spotted.

Grin splitting her face, she reached out and urged him forward with an open hand. "Sir. Don't be shy," she teased. She'd already had too much to drink. "Come on over and socialize with these Earthling women."

He glared dangerously at her, twitching his arm away from her touch even as he dragged his feet forward. His eyes moved impatiently over the group of humans. Surveying the boring bunch, he snorted silently and settled his gaze instead on a distant point on the horizon, arms crossing, radiating hostility.

Raditz was asking the women their names, and they all tittered, giggling, batting their eyes at the brawny Saiyan soldiers.

All except one, who was downing a plastic cup full of ale and tossing it in the trash before turning back to the group with an irritable eye roll.

Vegeta balked, looking away. Only for his eyes to seek her again, and linger.

She was impudent in a satiny turquoise sheath, the neckline—and the cleavage it cradled—inexplicably drawing Vegeta's gaze. It was a flirtatious choice. Ugh, the irritating, asinine, teasing courtship culture on Earth was something he found absolutely tasteless. But there was something more self-assured about the way she carried herself, a solidity to her that set her leagues apart from the clueless googly-eyed dolls that surrounded her, giggling at a slew of pick up lines. Her features were just as insolent, her hair a few shades greener than her dress. A sea foam teal, straight and thick, cut just above her sharp, sapphire eyes and tucked around her ears. Softly rounded cheeks and a delicately pointed chin below a neat blue scowl. There was something instinctively familiar about her, and his black gaze roamed her, searching.

Someone elbowed her, and she cast a dirty look in his team's direction.

"He asked you what your name was," one of the women reminded her.

The woman put her hand on her hip and leveled a bored gaze at Raditz.

"Bulma," she replied flatly. "Bulma Briefs."

Vegeta's eyes narrowed.

"And what do you do, Bulma?" Raditz practically purred, tossing back his hair and throwing his arm around one of the Earthing females, who giggled. "Model? Singer? Lemme guess: Actress?"

And he remembered.

Those same lips curling up at the corners as she shot him a wink; the same sharp blue eyes catching his playfully. A bold red dress and a leggy swagger. A milkshake straw held between full pink lips and a salacious sway.

Vegeta's eyes widened.

She looked down her nose at Raditz. "I build and engineer star ships," she snipped, and Vegeta froze. And sipped from her champagne flute without bothering to make eye contact with any of them. "Excuse me," she said, but she was already turning away without waiting to be excused, heading to a table plated high with enough food to accommodate several dozen Saiyan troops.

Vegeta couldn't draw breath. He braced as a wall of feelings rocked him. A heady liquor of disbelief, stirred in a cocktail of panic, and a little slice of electric attraction on the side.

Fasha swallowed the remainder of her wine and her eyes crinkled with amusement. "Wow, what arrogance." Fasha blinked as Vegeta's eyes followed the woman. She stared at him curiously. "Interested in her, General?..."

But he was already walking away, prowling through the crowd toward the woman in blue picking at the food table irritably.

The crowd broke just before the tables, but Vegeta felt himself slow at the edges, and then stop altogether.

He paced behind her at its edges, unable yet to mentally break past the barrier that separated the wonderful ignorance that had been the last several weeks of blissful phone fucking, and the bleak reality that awaited him once he took that last step forward.

Vegeta stepped back, letting the crowd consume him and the edge of it mend itself as if he were never there.

It didn't have to end.

He had the power, right now, to keep the secret contained and the dumb joy he got from it alive, the gift that kept on giving.

Vegeta turned to walk away from the embarrassing, overwhelming encounter that was sure to happen if he didn't.

It wasn't running away when it was a strategic decision, right?

But his eyes didn't leave her back as he drifted away, the pale, smooth skin wrapped cozily in satin, watching her bend forward at the waist to pinch a cupcake from the back of the table with tongs, the hem of her short dress sliding up her smooth, curvy legs.

He was behind her instantly.

His mouth at her ear.

Vegeta's lips moved against her temple.

"What color panties are you wearing today?"

It was rushed, angry.

And the woman froze.

Slowly, she turned her head over her shoulder to regard him with wide, horrified eyes.

"You're her," Vegeta accused, their hips brushing with his nearness as she turned fully around to face him, her butt pressed against the table.

Bulma blanched.

" _You?_ " She finally squawked. She looked around frantically as if searching for someone that would save her from this nightmare. "Oh my god."

She turned back to him, and they stared at each other in mortified astonishment.

Bulma's gaze dipped, roaming the man in front of her forwardly.

He was a Saiyan.

Broad shouldered, thick chest tapering into a trim V at his waist. And he was ripped, even under all that formal armor. Her mouth parted and her stomach dropped in recognition, spotting the familiar blood smeared handprint at his breast. She stared at the tail that tightened around his hips, realized the dull shape of what lingered below it…and blushed.

"Oh, my," she murmured.

He was delicious.

Their eyes locked again, and she held her breath, waiting with a tremulous anticipation for him to say something.

But he just stared at her, black and cold, with a look that could be perceived only as deep insult and regret.

Vegeta growled and turned on his heel, stalking straight through the crowd to the doors, people parting for him jumpily.

Bulma watched in shock, his cape snapping behind him as the front door swallowed him up.

And after a long moment, leaning against the table with the brush of his hip still haunting her own, Bulma accepted the reaction for what it was.

She'd been rejected.

…

And, like any misfortunate event in a person's life, these thing came in pairs.

Especially when you now worked with the same jerk who'd whispered nasty, despicable, _super_ hot things he'd do to you against your ear as you came, before dumping you in the middle of a wedding reception.

And on her first day, wouldn't you know it, Bulma glanced up from the engine of a Saiyan starbarge in the ship hangar and locked eyes with The Bastard as he swept in with a party of other upper crust Saiyans, who were too busy ooh'ing and aww'ing over the brand new hangar and design team to notice him freeze with confusion and flush scarlet, nor the new star ship engineer's eyes narrow into dangerous, penetrating slits and her jaw clench, eyes burning holes into his with obvious malice, before she turned her nose up and flipped her hair at him with contempt.

At least the asshole had the audacity to freeze and walk back out the way he came.

Of course. Why hadn't she expected it? _Of course_ he'd work here.

"Careful of that guy," one of her co-workers warned her good-naturedly, boring out a cylinder with his safety goggles perched on his nose. "That's the Special Forces General. He is…not very pleasant to be around." Her co-worker gave her a grim look and continued with his work.

Bulma's mouth moved senselessly around so many words she couldn't vocalize.

The _General?!_

He was the same bastard who had refused her interview?

It was a very long first day on the job for Bulma, and it passed in distracted fits and starts and stops. And when she walked out the front doors at the end of the day, onto an unfamiliar sidewalk into a crowd of Saiyans and a medley of off-worlders who spoke in so many different languages but her own, Bulma felt very alone.

She floated, withdrawn, heading for the subway. The last few months replayed like a song through her fingers as she sought her phone and dialed his number, only to realize what she was doing and shove it back into her pocket, shuffling on down the subway platform. She wasn't going to further sully her pride.

Bulma let the subway carry her through the city's belly numbly, until she was stepping out not onto her platform but a different one.

And as so many women do when confronted by man trouble, Bulma knocked furiously on her best friend's door before charging in and bursting into tears.

ChiChi listened to Bulma recount the last few months of phone calls and the wedding with wide eyes, bouncing baby Gohan rhythmically on her hip. By the end of Bulma's story, ChiChi looked a bit shell-shocked, her mouth parted with disbelief as Gohan yawned in her arms.

"He's the General of the Special Forces?" ChiChi's voice was a thin squeak. "And now you _work_ with him?"

Bulma sprawled out onto ChiChi's couch with a noisy sigh, eyes finally dry. "Yes," she complained. "Cheech, what am I gonna do?" She looked up at her friend plaintively.

"Oh my god, Bulma, I don't know." ChiChi's mouth still hung open, and she sat tentatively down beside her. "This isn't exactly a thing that happens often. Like, how many people have experience with these circumstances and could offer advice? I mean, you couldn't ask me about where to buy diapers or how to make pot roast?"

Bulma took Gohan carefully from ChiChi's arms and buried her nose in his thick black hair. She cuddled the baby quietly, thinking. "I'm so angry and offended." Bulma paused. "He just cut me loose. Just like that."

She had tried to reason it and justify it and untangle it all day, after spending Sunday blindly watching tv and folding the same shirt, over and over again.

Was she not pretty enough? Did he not expect her to be an Earthling? What the hell else could it be? How could the man who had let her in and confided in her in a way he could with no one else just cruelly reject her when they finally came face to face? He wasn't the man she'd thought he was. She felt betrayed by him.

ChiChi's brows knit with sympathy, and she put her hand on Bulma's thigh.

"Was this your way of getting back at Yamcha? A rebound? Wow, Bulma. That's a fine revenge for any breakup, but a Saiyan?"

Bulma's expression became stormy. "It wasn't like that," she chomped, swatting ChiChi's hand. "I don't know how to explain it. It wasn't something that was planned." Gohan's soft cheeks were smooshed against Bulma's chest, and she ran her finger softly over his delicate skin as he napped despite her mood. "But it was more than just…you know. It was more than that."

"And a Saiyan?" ChiChi snorted, ignoring her. "That's even better."

"Yeah," Bulma finally agreed, smiling. "Yamcha didn't like Saiyans. Scared of them, probably. Isn't that right?" She nodded enthusiastically at Gohan's sleeping face like he was in on the joke.

ChiChi's eyes widened. "No, I mean, because Yamcha's dating a Saiyan."

Bulma came stuttering to a halt.

"WHAT?!"

…

Bulma had been fantasizing all day long as she worked.

It was a seductive fantasy, one where she confronted Yamcha somewhere. His apartment, maybe, or a restaurant, where _she'd_ be—the other woman—and he'd be surrounded by his co-workers and rich peers. Yes, it would be somewhere public, somewhere ripe for social justice.

And she'd stride up to him calmly, so cool in heels and a leather jacket, and he'd be nervous because his new piece was by his side. And as the group came to a hush, Bulma would pull out a chair at the table, she'd cross her legs and rest her heels on the table, and lean back. And smirk.

How did I lose this amazing woman? Yamcha would be thinking.

"It's not what it looks like," he'd say.

Bulma would grab his beer before he had a chance to drink from it, point one of the fingers at him that clutched the bottle, and say, "Five years ago, that was me." She'd point at the pretty waif clutching Yamcha with fright. "I was young, and rich, and you were nothing. I lifted you up into my social class and showed you all the places to go, got you connections. And you repay me like this?"

Bulma would tsk, take a long swallow from the beer. The table was utterly silent, hanging onto her every word.

"But I'm not surprised you'd sink so low. You can't buy class, after all." And then Yamcha would be unable to look away as she said,

"After all…it's not like you could ever make me cum."

But here, in the present, Bulma's eyes lowered grimly, a somber mood bearing its soft weight on her shoulders.

And when she looked up, _he_ was there, walking right outside the hallway lined with windows. His dark eyes were shut up tight, but she could have sworn, just for a moment, he nodded at her.

And then he was passing her by.

Bulma's hands trembled on her tools. She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. And as she slowly put her tools in her belt, readying for a climb inside the engine, Bulma replayed the fantasy, but instead of throwing her drink at Yamcha or slapping him, as she sat in the chair across from him, her legs crossed on the table, her arms across her chest, a shadowy figure began to make itself known behind her as she smiled.

Yamcha would look up over her shoulder.

And out of the smoky shadows, a figure would emerge, rippled with muscle and crowned with a flame of hair.

And Bulma would smirk, and, one hand reaching up, she'd turn her face upwards as the Saiyan General behind her bent down and she clutched his hair and kissed him wickedly, thoroughly, watching Yamcha's heart shatter into dust and his head explode from the corner of her eyes with a smile.

…

A week for the icy disgrace to thaw to acceptance and warm to a fuzzy uncertainty. The first few days of her new job were spent fuming, wondering at every turn if she'd run into him. Is he around this corner? This one? _This_ one? Would they see each other at lunch? Did her lab coat wash her out? Should she show more cleavage, make him feel the sharp stab of regret? Should she serve up a chilly reception if they ran into each other, or should she confront him loudly and embarrass him in front of those other stuck up Elites as revenge? She felt paranoid, like she was being watched, because at any moment he could be right behind her and did she look hot? Because she wanted him to feel very, very sorry.

The truth of it was, she was just so hurt. And in the weirdest way.

She was hurt in the same way a person hurts after a breakup.

But not because of Yamcha. Not because he was seeing someone else now. She'd been prepared for him to see other women, though there was still bitterness that he'd finally just come out publicly and let everyone know Bulma wasn't good enough.

But there was no love lost. No, with distance she could see that it hadn't been the L-word that bound them like really poorly performing glue. She hadn't cared about whether or not they were an item or whether he was committed for a long time, not since their anniversary and the engagement flop, not since the last year of spurned advances, not since…since her own fling. And that was at the heart of it: the abrupt end of her own affair, aching.

And looking back on the phone entanglement with just a little bit of perspective, she understood that it had been more than just the sex for her, or a rebound from one failed relationship to another to distract herself from Yamcha's apathy. It wasn't even just the Saiyan's pursuit of her, which was flattering, but, oh no, gosh, she really _liked_ him.

They shared an intimacy cradled on radio waves and electrical signals, two confidants and a raw understanding that she'd never had with anyone else. And she missed him. She really did. God, she missed what they'd had, she missed calling him after a bad day, she missed talking into the dark, she missed the deep voice on the other line that assured her everyone was really missing out on _them_.

He was like a book she was keeping open, one she wanted to keep reading.

And she put her socket wrench down on the table with a deliberate thump.

And began striding out of the hangar.

Besides the hall directly outside the hangar, Bulma was unfamiliar with the layout of the Saiyan base. It was huge, with a wing for a barracks and a wing for training and a separate wing for their star fighters and fleet, where she worked. As she wiped her hands on her coveralls, hustling down the busy halls, she felt a twinge of doubt. How would she even find him? Where would he even be? Would he even want to see her? Well of course not. He'd made that clear by stomping off at the wedding.

How had she expected it to end anyway? The illicit thing between them, how would it have ever revealed its face and survived in the real world? What had she really expected of it, where would it have gone? If they had never run into each other, despite that now it seemed fated to unravel so? Would she have eventually wanted to meet him? Hadn't she thought of it before, what it'd be like to see him face to face? Fantasized about dragging him back to her place straight away, about where things might go from there?

Just as she still did?

And she came to a halt in the middle of the hall.

People walked around her, glancing at the woman standing motionless in the middle of the hallway with dull surprise. Bulma's hand hovered over her pocket before it plunged in and grabbed her phone.

Her fingers moved over the sequence of numbers of his phone number smoothly as if she'd never stopped dialing it.

In the middle of the hallway, she put the phone to her ear, chewing her fingernails.

It rang hollowly in her ear.

Once.

Twice.

On the third ring, the panic spread from her racing heart to her belly with fear that it would go unanswered. That it would be answered.

The ringing stopped, and someone answered with a very neutral, "Yes?"

Bulma's throat clenched. What was she going to say now that she had his attention? Her heart slammed around in her chest.

"Where are you?"

"Why?" He responded suspiciously.

"Where are you?" She demanded this time.

"Why should I tell you?" This time his response was boyishly churlish.

"Fine." Bulma turned to the nearest Saiyan and tapped him on the shoulder. "Sir, could you tell me where the office of the General of the Special Forces is?"

The Saiyan gave her a funny look, and answered uncertainly, "Sure."

"Hey!" The man on the other end of the line cried. "Don't you dare—"

"It's just down this hall. You'll take a right," the helpful Saiyan was saying, "and it will be the third door on your left."

Bulma's gracious smile lit up her whole face. "Thank you very much." She winked at him and began making her way down the hall, leaving the Saiyan standing there dazed by her charm.

There was a growl on the other end of the line, but Bulma kept making her way determinedly down the hall in her standout blue coveralls and boots, a lone figure among spandex and breastplates.

"Don't you try to run away from me, either," she thought to say into her phone.

"I run faster than you," was all he said.

And then she turned the corner and saw him.

He was standing in the doorway of an office, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at her, his phone pressed against his ear before he snapped it shut.

Bulma slowed down.

Slowly, she pulled her own pink phone away from her ear and put it in her pocket without looking away. She walked towards him carefully, a clear expression of uncertainty writ on her open face.

Bulma came to a stop in front of the man she'd been having a torrid phone sex affair with.

…

Vegeta was absolutely defenseless.

"Can we talk?" The woman asked firmly. The chime of her familiar voice after so long jarred him.

Vegeta glanced around jerkily and then pulled her into his office by her coveralls before slamming the door behind her.

She gave him a black look, brushed herself off with irritation, and settled onto the the arm of a chair, crossing her arms and scowling at him. It was a little bit unsettling to be on the receiving end of that look.

He sat behind his desk, hoping it would make him look more in control than he felt.

This hadn't been part of the plan!

"You bastard. You refused to interview me!"

Vegeta stumbled. That wasn't the opener he expected.

Then his eyes widened. Oh shit.

Oh shit.

"I didn't know…that was you?" His defense sounded just as dumb to him as it did to her.

"I hope you took my advice."

His face was a mask that barely contained the feelings warring inside him, chief among them panic. What was the protocol in this situation? He was going to have to improvise!

"The advice to go eat a dick?"

"The very same."

The stared at each other in taut silence.

"So…." And her eyes softened, and she shifted in her chair. "You've made clear this is over." She sighed, resting her chin on her knuckles. "Could you at least give me a reason why?"

The silence was thick.

Vegeta didn't answer.

After a moment, with obvious disappointment, Bulma took that as answer enough, and stood abruptly and held out her hand.

"Then give me your phone."

Vegeta's face screwed with confusion. "No," he said incredulously.

The woman dove for his pocket.

Vegeta, shocked, was still faster than her. Much, much faster. He shifted and closed his hand around her wrist. Not hard at all. Carefully.

She was bent over him and hadn't given an inch in spite of her clear disadvantage.

"Give me your phone so I can delete all my photos."

"What?"

"This is over," she bit out, lashing out for his pocket with her other hand, and he grabbed the wayward thing with the hand that wasn't already clamped around her. "So I want you to delete all the photos I sent you."

"No," Vegeta said aghast, her chest in his face as she wrestled for control.

She stilled. "No?" She repeated shrilly, staring at him. "What do you mean, _no_?"

He stood, fighting the urge to take a step back. She was close enough that he could smell the soap she used this morning, admire the blue of her eyes, watery and deep, as she stared at him like she wanted to set him on fire.

And then she ripped her hands away and started swatting him. "You perv!" She kicked him in the shin, and he stood there solidly, aghast.

"I am not a pervert!" Vegeta said through clenched teeth. And then lifted his thigh to cover himself as she went for a knee to the groin.

He picked her up with annoyance and moved her easily to his desk, quickly locking his own legs around hers as she made another surprise kick. He gripped her upper arms, and wondered briefly whether or not you could really shake sense into a person.

"I am _not_ …a pervert," Vegeta insisted, having trouble remembering words. Not from physical assertion, as Vegeta was in quite excellent physical condition. She was just so close his brain was melting.

The woman watched him shrewdly. "And yet?" She glanced down, her knees pinned between his legs.

Vegeta scoffed. "You made me do this," he snarled.

"Did not. What I wanted was to kick you in the balls and then walk out with your phone in my hand."

"Well that's not going to happen." He cautioned her, but it came out in one long, irritated sigh. "Can we just talk for a moment?"

Her jaw set angrily. "So _now_ you're willing to talk?"

And then, as if at the very same time, Vegeta and Bulma realized just how close they were. Their faces near enough to feel the other's breath flutter on their face. The inside of his thighs rubbing against her own. His hands on her arms, and her eyes followed up the bulging bicep and rounded shoulder to fasten on the wide, dark eyes that had just realized his error.

For a stupid second—after all, Vegeta may have been a super special Saiyan, but he was still male—he admired the shape of her lips. Pink and full and crooked downward with disapproval. Her skin was creamy and he wondered what it might feel like under his thumbs. He liked the way she felt between his knees. He liked the way she looked in her mishmashed uniform. He wanted to run his hands through her thick, soft hair before pulling her close enough to taste. What would she taste like? He didn't have any experience in that stupid human convention, but he bet if he put his lips against hers he'd be good at it.

She cleared her throat, watching him. And shifted between his legs, causing him to grit his teeth. "Would you like to have dinner?"

Vegeta felt like she kept pulling the rug out from under him and next time there'd just be no floor, just an abyss to hurtle through.

Bulma realized that was a bit of a leap as his face screwed further with confusion, trying to make sense of her leap, and so she hurried to explain. "Not a date, but, so we can talk further about…it."

The silence dragged on, and the woman chewed her bottom lip.

Vegeta gazed at her lip.

"I can do tonight at 8," he finally offered, careful as stepping around broken glass.

"Meet me in front of the hangar?"

No, he thought. Not where he could be seen with her. He had a carefully cultivated reputation that he didn't do 'friends' and he wasn't going to ruin it now.

Instead, he answered, "Sure."

Satisfied, she uncurled herself from him awkwardly—prying his legs open, ducking under his arms—and walked towards the door. She seemed completely mentally intact, while he was on fire, he was crashing, he was alive and boyishly wide-eyed and he wanted her to stay.

And she opened the door, stopped, and turned around. He met her there cautiously in the threshold of his office.

And she jabbed him hard with her finger. "Next time I won't miss."

"You wish," Vegeta said under his breath.

"No more panty pics for you, jerk," she snipped, narrowing her eyes at him as she turned sassily and sauntered off down the hall, glancing back only to point at her eyes and then point to him in a clear gesture of _"I'm watching you."_

As she turned the corner and he could no longer see her, and every inch of him throbbed with desire to do…something, he didn't understand what. His hands clenched with unfulfilled need to have her in his hands again, urgency pumping through him to do…something. Shake her? Make fun of her like a pubescent boy until she cried? Pin her, again and again and again, his hands in her hair and her hips back between his where they belonged?

She was fucking amazing.

And then swung his head to the side, where Toma and Raditz stood, staring.

Vegeta flushed, shoulders bunching up around his ears. "What are you looking at?!"

And then slammed the door in their faces.

Raditz and Toma shared a purely flabbergasted look.

…

He knew the instant she walked out the doors from the back of a crowd of Saiyans. She hadn't bothered to change, still wearing the baggy flight suit under the rolled up sleeves of her lab coat, a bright red bandana tied in a knot around her short hair, a lunch box banging her thigh as the closed the door behind her.

He waited at the edges of the sidewalk stiffly, hands at his sides. Hoped the shadows of the oaks hid him from the view of any Saiyans.

Her head yanked up with an awareness of being watched, and they locked gazes.

She smiled, a small, pretty smile, and it made the fur on his tail stand on end.

As she neared him, she held out her hand.

"Bulma," she said smoothly.

He slowly held out his own. "Vegeta," he said, and her soft, cool palm slid into his.

They released each other's hand, and the hand went to her hip. "Are you that embarrassed?" Her eyes ticked over his tense posture. Her smile grew at his expense, cheeks rosy. It made Vegeta feel funny. "You know, it's not so bad." She began to walk slowly down the sidewalk, and he followed, prowling atop the low stone wall, a healthy space between them. She looked consideringly at the skyline. "No one else knows, right?"

He glanced at her and shook his head.

"No harm done then, right?"

That wasn't the issue, Vegeta thought. It was enough that _he_ knew.

"Do you like steak?" The woman's voice was buoyant in the night, free. "Let's go have a steak and a beer. For old times sake." She smiled up at him. "My treat."

He nodded, and they walked the two blocks to the steakhouse in silence.

It was surreal, walking side by side with a man who she'd been intimate with but was still a complete stranger. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, and suppressed a smile.

He definitely did _not_ know how to act right now. He was unraveled, and it was pretty cute. Although 'cute' wouldn't describe him at glance, with the mouth-watering chiseled jaw and muscles any woman would swoon over, and then the menacing stare that'd make them fall over each other as they scurried away. She chewed her cheek, watching him. Bulma had a lot of experience dating hotties back when she was younger, but he didn't act like the type that knew he was good-looking or used it to his advantage with an insincere charm. There was something about the way the Saiyan carried himself, the way he both observed everything and distanced himself from it all as if to protect himself. With pinched eyebrows and a straight mouth, as if he always expected himself to find trouble and be responsible for ending it. He was still dressed in his military uniform, a strong neck bared by the short sleeved body suit and breastplate. Saiyans were all like this, all bulging muscles and drool-worthy silhouettes, yet she'd never met a Saiyan besides Goku that she'd liked. But this one was barely the same species. He was reserved, still as the face of water on a windless day. Clammed up, calculating. More complicated and faceted than other Saiyans…yet, more emotional, even. She thought back to his angry callbacks, his troubled confessions, and to the vulnerability that passed his face this afternoon, the absolute innocent uncertainty of how to behave that prompted her to take a risk and ask him out.

He was a high ranking official, he'd said. He didn't get to indulge or be expressive like the men and women under him. Boy, he hadn't been exaggerating. The responsibility and seriousness radiated from him, but he seemed to bristle under the weight of it, like it wasn't quite his nature to be so obedient, either. His skin glowed in the warm lights of the restaurants they passed, his face impassive, but every so often, his eyes would slide to the corner to steal a glance of her.

He seemed to grow even more restless once they were inside. He hovered like an ominous shadow behind her as they waited to be seated.

They ignored the occasional glances from the other guests. Saiyans weren't known for socializing with other races, and an Earthling Saiyan duo was even more uncommon. It didn't help that the Saiyan in front of her looked like he'd shoot lasers from his eyes if someone looked at him wrong. He wore a dangerous and utterly cool mask he put up as soon as they were in public, and it was making the bar patrons visibly antsy.

Bulma just smiled at him warmly in response.

He had barely relaxed, and he found anything but her to look at as he sipped his beer.

"You clean up nice," he finally said bluntly, referring to her skin-baring numbers from Spacey's and the wedding, and then turned his head to hide his discomfort.

"You mean, at the wedding? Is that a complement or an insult?" She smirked. "The jump suit isn't exactly flattering, I know. I didn't change into real clothes on purpose. This is your punishment for ignoring me." A smile played at the corners of her mouth. "But under the jump suit and the grease I'm wearing some awfully nice underwear. Or did you forget?"

He looked down at the table to hide the blush that swept his cheeks.

"Were those your coworkers?" She sipped her own beer, curious blue eyes over the rim of the cup.

"At the wedding?" He cleared his throat.

She nodded.

"Yes."

"You're right. You're not like them."

He finally met her eyes. The full weight of his gaze was intimidating.

"You're not like any Saiyan I've met, honestly," she continued. "A lot quieter. Introspective, even."

Her voice was gentle with him, without the hard edge she'd had around the other men at the wedding. Should he be flattered or offended that she wasn't scared of him?

"I'm quite Saiyan," he argued dangerously.

She put her jaw on her fist and admired him. Her eyes roamed him. He had broad shoulders, a thick chest that narrowed to a compact waist. A cut jaw and cheeks, pronounced even further in the lighting.

It was hard for Vegeta to pretend like he didn't notice.

"Saiyans are always so put out by other races." Her nose wrinkled. "Meanwhile, we have to deal with _you,_ and you don't hear us complaining." Her voice softened. "Is that why you're not interested in continuing things?"

He looked up, startled by the pointed question…and by the fact that she'd be interested at all in continuing things.

Their waitress slid their plates in front of them, and she watched him as his shoulders scrunched minutely.

"No," he finally said.

And realized he meant it. It didn't matter that she was human. That wasn't the problem. No, he wasn't fond of humans; nor was he fond of Saiyans, for that matter. He didn't much like anyone but himself. And he didn't really like himself, either. But she was neither human nor Saiyan. Those categories didn't contain her.

"Are Saiyans not attracted to other races?" She put a spoonful of soup to her mouth and watched him curiously.

She had an open face, like anyone could approach her. But it was expressive. In seconds it could go stormy to adoring to critical to exuberant. Vegeta's eyes flicked over her before downing most of his beer. She was pretty, he thought, real pretty, and bold and unapologetic and daring and annoying.

"That's not the issue at all," he admitted, looking away as his face heated.

Her heart swelled at the admission.

He didn't want to hurt her. "But...I liked the anonymity."

Her smile disappeared, gradually, before it came back, scrunching her eyes with its force.

It was a practiced smile, a smile she'd used with Yamcha countless times. "I understand," she said, but he could hear the disappointment. "I just, I wanted to make sure it wasn't something I did. I just needed closure," she murmured, barely audible.

His chest tightened. She would understand his hesitance about relationships better than anyone.

Why? Why did it matter? Were these someone else's restrictions, or his own rules? Did they really lead him closer to power and prestige? Was being attracted to a woman really so bad?

He thought of all the crass gossip and sexual escapades of his men and inwardly cringed. He didn't want anything to do with that. He wanted…he wanted…well, he'd never wanted a woman before, not any longer than a night's commitment. If he thought about it, if he had a choice, he wanted something more dignified than that. But how could he save face and maintain his hard-won badass reputation while running around with an Earthling? It wasn't just that his socializing skills left so much to be desired, which they did, really, really did, but that women had never been part of the equation. He fought shit, he made a career out of it, and he wanted to fight more shit and get stronger and faster and cooler and better and the fucks a woman got to do with that? His commitment was to his advancement, despite how much he despised his job these days, and insane phenomenal cosmic warriors didn't have the time or patience for clingy women. _Your career is crumbling around you,_ he reminded himself. So which way does a man go? Toward obedience and advancement? Or to self-indulgence and brief freedom?

She gestured at his plate as if shooing away his concerns. "Eat. This is our last hurrah, after all, before we start pretending like we don't know each other. Might as well enjoy it."

He remembered other things they'd enjoyed, but he pulled the big bite of steak from his fork and watched his plate.

He bailed. In everything else except a fight, he bailed. There was little to be proud of.

They ate quietly, and when the waiter brought the bill, Vegeta insisted that he would pay for his.

They walked out into the cool night air, the door of the restaurant shutting firmly behind them.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek lightly, her hand on his shoulder. The scent of her was in his nose. He stiffened.

She pulled back and smiled, sadly, the lights of the sign gleaming fire in her hair.

And then they said goodbye, and turned to walk away from each other.

…

The street swam in Bulma's vision and she pressed her lips together hard to keep from crying. The intersection bounced around in her vision as she took another step forward, and another step, and as she took another step, the subway entrance in her view, there was a rush of air that mussed her hair.

And there he was, landing lightly in front of her despite the city's no-fly rule.

He didn't reach out and touch her, but his mouth was slanted and he was frowning, like he disagreed with something, before his lips flattened with resolve.

And then he reached out and smoothed her hair.

Bulma blinked as his hand came near and his fingers settled at her temples, his thumb tracing her ear, before settling carefully under her chin and tilting her head up. Her gaze softened, her lips parted, and he took a step closer.

A sound came from his chest, an irritated growl as if he wished he would stop or that he would do more, but instead his hand dropped, and it circled her wrist lightly. Bulma glanced down at his hand on her skin with wide eyes, and then back up.

"Can we meet tomorrow?" His voice was uncertain and rough, interwoven with the hovercar traffic in the street, the footfalls of passersby that spilled around them blindly.

"No more anonymous?" Her voice was soft. The warm city lights played like dappled sunlight against her hair.

"There's something you should know about me. I don't really like following the rules," Vegeta answered the universe, smirk crooking dangerously, and she smiled up at him inside the bubble of the city lights against the night, the faraway sounds of traffic and reality buffeting against them softly.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Aside: Thank you everyone who likes it when I write this guilty pleasure garbage. I've been asking myself, is this erotica, or clumsily written dweeb fiction? Is it just a really vulgar attempt at comedy? Is it something you admit to no one that you read and enjoy? Can I get an award if it's all of the above? P.S. Writing is hard. I have seven drafts of this with different plots and endings. Inevitably I end up asking myself "Why am I trying so hard on a fan fiction where Vegeta and Bulma just bang?" It's hard to have integrity. And I iz sowwy about the long updates. You'll see the next chapter in your inbox in the next few days tho. It has all the steam that I shorted you in this one. P.S.S. Shout out to the fan artists who immortalize my work (you can thank vegetapsycho for the story cover *nail painting emoji*), and to my reviewers, I love you

* * *

Bulma snatched the push-up bra from its velvet hangar and clutched it to her chest. "This is it." She stared reverentially at the bra. "This is The One."

Oh, yes **.** _This_ would be her weapon to wield against a particular flame-haired loner. The ultimate penis-erecting accessory that every woman should have in their arsenal.

Deep merlot, silk and velvet—a bustier with a matching garter—oh, she certainly didn't _need_ any more lingerie, but tonight was special. She deserved to splurge the hard-won cash earned wrenching on star ships—machines that would see the universe and leave her behind. Splurge, and sploosh, and all the onomatopoeias that accompanied what her lady parts were going to be doing. Because tonight, things'd be getting _nasty_.

And not just with any dick, but—

"Vegeta? Never heard of him," ChiChi said into her latte next to Gohan's stroller.

"He's sooooo handsome," Bulma said, spinning with outstretched arms into the changing room and snapping the curtain into place. "I am going to fuck the _shit_ out of that man tonight," she sighed as she unzipped her dress.

"A woman has to have priorities," commented Eighteen blandly.

"Yes, and you know what that means." Bulma's voice turned hard. The curtain whipped open fractionally, and Bulma stared with grim seriousness at ChiChi through the slit. "Don't call me, don't text me. Don't even think about me. I don't want anything to mess this up."

ChiChi rolled her eyes, sipping her latte from under blunt black bangs.

"Don't act like you don't think about it night and day," Bulma hissed.

ChiChi had the nerve to look offended. "I'm a _mother,"_ she reminded them all, as if they'd forgotten. "I have more important things I'll be doing tonight, like raising a child." Punctually, Gohan spit up and smiled at his mother with a cherub's grace. ChiChi wiped his mouth, muttering."See?" ChiChi melted into her seat, lower lip quivering. "I wish I had _time_ to fool around," she whined. "And even when I do, Kami, it'd be nice if Goku would just put out some effort once in awhile…"

"Hope springs eternal." Eighteen chewed her gum.

"He says his jaw gets tired," ChiChi continued irritably. " _His_ jaw gets tired? What about _mine?_ "

ChiChi was hosting her own reunion tonight. Her husband Goku was scheduled to land this evening after a months long training venture on planet Yardrat, where he'd been learning unconventional fighting methods. Bulma had dragged ChiChi to the lingerie boutique so that she could buy her own celebratory panties, but so far, ChiChi had just sat rigidly in the chairs outside the fitting room and glared at the wall, clutching some nude panty hose she'd snatched up on her blind march to the fitting rooms. ChiChi, it seemed, wouldn't be allowing any hanky panky, not until she could suitably punish him for leaving. Familiar with ChiChi's anger, the other two women knew that it'd likely burn until she buried him six feet underground. That, unfortunately, wasn't a euphemism.

"I'll be far too busy to ruin your night," ChiChi snipped, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

Gohan jerked her long black hair and ChiChi cried out.

Ignoring her, Bulma hoisted her breasts into an emerald teddy behind the changing room curtain. "What say you, Eighteen?" Bulma poked her head out and grinned. Her excitement was getting on everyone's nerves. "Should I even _bother_ taking him out?" Bulma chuckled darkly. "Orrrr, should I drag him immediately back to my place?" The changing room curtain fell back into place and her humming resumed as she fluffed her hair and eyed the lingerie, unable to pick a favorite.

But pick one she must, because Bulma was fighting time and, probably, like, the rules of attraction itself. She had to get Vegeta back to her place fast, or else his tolerance for other people would expire like a parking meter and he might edge out of the unspoken deal they'd made to bring a phone sex relationship into real life. She had to trap him pronto, which was why she needed an Excalibur-like level of underwear that would make her reluctant Saiyan's penis proudly stand, before dragging him right between her thighs like a dousing rod scenting for water.

She'd been given a real opportunity tonight.

She was going to _wreck_ that man.

"Do you have condoms?" Eighteen's voice came muffled from behind the curtain.

Bulma snorted. "Of course."

ChiChi rolled her eyes. "Of course." She sat her chin in her palm grumpily.

Bulma checked out the curve of her ass in the mirror from over her shoulder. "You'd think that I'd earn a complement for being prepared."

"No class at all," ChiChi muttered.

"Safe sex is important," Eighteen offered.

"Yeah, ChiChi," Bulma sneered.

"Well, condoms aren't on _my_ radar at _all_. Goku's not getting _anything_ from me tonight," ChiChi snarled, staring daggers at the wall as she bounced baby Gohan on her knee. "Let him suffer like I've suffered."

The curtain slipped open, and Bulma, dressed once again, fell into the chairs beside the women, cradling a heap of lingerie with a new, uncharacteristic frown of concern.

"Uh," she began, with a dip in confidence. "ChiChi? Saiyans are just like humans down there, right? The anatomy's the same, isn't it? I don't have to worry about any kind of species-to-species, werewolf-type viruses, do I? No special shaped condoms? No, uh…weird mating rituals?"

ChiChi's eyes were round with surprise. "Are you asking me," she spelled out slowly, "if Goku has a weird shaped penis…or a sexually transmitted disease?"

Bulma's groan was loud in the boutique. "You're so _dramatic_ , ChiChi." But she settled her chin on her knuckles and watched ChiChi with interest. "…But does he?"

"Bulma Briefs!" ChiChi yelled, slapping Bulma in the head with her diaper bag.

…

But even that couldn't dim her excitement.

Like a song she just couldn't stop replaying, Bulma had thought of last night over and over and over since she'd left Vegeta with a soft goodbye at the intersection. Her smile was dreamy as she leaned her head against the train window, making fog against the glass with a satisfied sigh. She watched the scene animate against the window pane: His fingers grazing the hair at her temple. Features softened in the glow of the night. Exposed.

But even if her head was ready to explode in a celebratory hail of fireworks, Bulma wasn't totally dumb. Maybe selfish and impulsive sometimes, but she was also dogged by logic. She still held reservations about tonight.

Because there was one little problem:

Her phone sex partner didn't date.

So, when Vegeta finally messaged her in the early evening, Bulma sat her blow drier down and replied, "Let's go for a drink," thinking with that big brain of hers that this particular Saiyan just needed a few beers to loosen up. His self-esteem wouldn't suffer if she just got straight to the point, surely! He was Saiyan, after all—he'd probably swagger and beat his chest braggadociously if she said she just couldn't stand one more second of talking about feelings or else she'd rip his clothes right off.

Just a few beers, get Vegeta loosey-goosey, and then she'd have that provocatively sexy, emotionally stunted Saiyan in the palm of her hand.

…

A dark figure leaned against the bar, looking into his drink before he tossed it back, ignoring the crowd behind him with obvious contempt for everyone.

The inside door shut with a suck behind Bulma, and she ran her fingers through her hair to settle it, eyes alighting on the figure instantly. Whistling silently, eyes narrowing with appreciation, Bulma thought what all women think when they discover a sizzling hot man alone at a bar, as if Fate had placed him perfectly in her path:

 _I am going to have that man's babies._

A bar stool was open next to him, her name writ all over it. She smoothed her dress nervously at her hips, pressing her lips together.

"I can do this," she reassured herself inside the doorway. The radio was cranked loud, blasting through the bar speakers and drowning her out. "I'm Bulma Briefs!" She made a fist in front of her. "Fighting!" She whispered fiercely. "You can do this!" With a jittery one-two-punch in the air, Bulma took a deep breath, and then begin slinking across the bar to the man she was going to wrap her legs around like a present.

And collided abruptly with a chest.

"—What the hell?"

"Hey, baby, looking good—"

"Ugh! Get lost!" Bulma forced a drunken Saiyan away with a splayed hand against his face.

Regaining her composure, Bulma took a breath, zooming in again on her prey. Vegeta had his back to her, searching for answers in his reflection in the liquor.

Her legs took one slinky stride after another, pulled towards the outrageously hunky outcast at the bar, her eyes gleaming with determination—

—when a hand grabbed her wrist and pressed her up against an extra wide breastplate, cheek smooshed against someone's hard midsection.

With shock, Bulma looked up…and up…into the Saiyan's eyes.

With a shock of short brown hair jutting from the top of his head, he grinned down at her.

"Hey, Earthling!"

He looked genuinely thrilled to have her in his clutches. Bulma just gaped, neck strained, reminded distantly of that story about men and mice she back-covered in high school.

"You're pretty."

Her brows formed a heavy, unamused line over her eyes. _Saiyans_. She really didn't know how anyone was afraid of them.

"Wanna have a drink with me?"

Bulma grabbed the hand that clasped her wrist and pried it off, shoving it away. "If you don't take your hands off me, buddy," she said through her teeth, "I'm going to dent your head!"

The Saiyans smile widened. "Wow, you really know how to talk dirty!"

Another Saiyan's wild head of hair popped over his shoulder with a mangled smile. "Hey, did you find an Earthling?"

"I love Earthlings!" Another one called, stepping over to ogle Bulma with his mug of beer.

"Hey, everyone, check out this Earthling!"

"I like this one especially," said the first one, reaching for her waist playfully.

With a shriek of indignation, Bulma did what any self-respecting, impulsive woman would do.

She balled up her fist and clocked him right in the jaw.

Like a candle flame blown out, the conversations in the bar smothered. Everyone had turned to watch the scene, but then the gazes shifted, looking over her shoulder.

Feeling the static of a sinister presence looming behind her, Bulma jerked around, raising her fist to protect herself from another handsy Saiyan.

And found one.

Vegeta.

Whose blue aura sparked, ki tripping along his muscled body, glaring death at the Saiyans under grim bar light.

Everyone came to attention at once, boots scraping wood, smashing their hands against their temples in a forceful salute.

Everyone except Bulma, who just groused, "Oh, good, you're here. I was about to wallop them," thumbing over her shoulder and sending scorching glares at the remaining Saiyans.

…

It was at that moment, his senses prickling, urging him to turn towards the door, when he'd caught the tail end of the scene. And as her fist arced toward a comically befuddled Saiyan's jowls, small and insignificant in the center of a bar dominated by Saiyan infantrymen, Vegeta felt that he was beholding the most beautiful woman in the world.

"Well, I'm definitely going to need a drink after that." Bulma smiled at Vegeta pleasantly. And then headed to the bar stool where he'd been waiting.

Now, Vegeta was having a more mixed reaction. He was torn between melting into the floor with humiliation, remaining a puddle the rest of his life to avoid any more humiliation, and grabbing all the Saiyans by their suits and hurling them into space.

Vegeta needed a drink, too—and he'd already had several.

He'd had given himself his own pep talk as he walked into the bar, having spent all day on the verge of chickening out and reaching his own levels of, uh, excitement about this night. Only, unlike Bulma, his excitement would be more accurately described as "nauseating panic" and didn't include a trip to buy more panties.

And now his discomfort had reached new levels.

He did _not_ want to be seen with her around other Saiyans.

And somehow she'd picked the place most saturated by Saiyans this side of the galaxy.

It was bad enough that he was playing at dating tonight, 1. defying all logic 2. with no ulterior motives 3. with nothing to win. Inserting himself into the weirdest Earthling customs, with an Earthling. Vegeta wasn't racist, but he did believe he was totally superior to everyone else, and if word got around the ranks that he rubbed elbows with natives, he'd be the laughingstock of the special forces! Vegeta, the proud, the prestigious, the powerful! Once he was released from out of the sticks of the universe, where Vegeta's luck was always being dragged through mud, over jutting rocks, and through thorny brush, why, _then_ he'd be respected and adored by all, and get everything he'd ever deserved!

But not if they found out he was just like them—consorting with humans, thinking of anything other than warfare and bloodshed round the clock! And now word most certainly would get out that he had third class desires like the rest of them! And now what was he to do?

Vegeta's eyes slid guiltily to peek at the woman. He was suspecting, half-crazed, that she'd picked up on the spectacular and hysterical mess that was ripping through his thoughts right now. Her eyes and hair were vibrant turquoise against pale skin, with a deeper clarity than the green dress she was wearing. But she was just smiling, a small, personal thing reserved only to proximity of him, as she hooked her heels on the rungs of the stool.

But on the Saiyan spectrum of "(1)Just put me out of my misery" and "(10)I blew shit up and I feel great!," Vegeta, gaze running over the consternating, happy woman at his side, was on the bad side of feelings right now. And not the good way it felt to be bad, but just plain lousy. Vegeta…felt…guilty for his reluctance to be seen with her.

All while all the eyes in the bar had settled on his shoulders.

Vegeta wondered if it were possible right now to emit enough ki to burn himself into ash that a breeze would just conveniently blow away.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and caught her staring down a couple brutish Saiyan infantryman, sending them scuttling backwards with their hands held up as they made to apologize.

Attraction surged through him.

And he was reminded why he'd agreed to this in the first place.

"Can we get some shots over here?" She was suddenly calling out. "Like, several?"

She watched the bartender pour a half dozen to split between them.

"More," her heard her encourage.

"More," she needled, the bartender glancing up with bewilderment to make sure he heard correctly.

"And just a fewwwwww more," she asked innocently before the bartender, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple, carefully pushed several dozen glasses in their direction, their contents slopping over the sides.

Vegeta just slid broodily into the stool next to her. To all those watching, he assured himself, he was just buying a plucky Earthling a drink. Grit and guts were something all Saiyans could get behind.

"Here!" His date said brightly, handing him a shot. Shot number two was already waiting in the wings in her other hand.

Oh, who was he kidding? He downed the liquor. Vegeta knew he'd never buy a drink for anyone, whether they'd shown spunk before he'd ground them into the dirt _or_ bested him fairly. Not when he was just so good at holding grudges!

"Fuck," Vegeta mumbled, low and guilty, but not even god was listening.

He was on a date, a date offered only to this irritating sprite that, whenever she was near, tangled him up in an emotional melee of indignity and hard-ons.

…

"What blockheads," Bulma griped about the Saiyans swarming the bar. "Not a single gentleman among them, I swear," she muttered, passing him another shot as she downed her own. "Except you, of course."

And then her eyes widened, and she turned to Vegeta, paling. "I'm not going to get fired for that, am I?" She gasped, gripping his shoulder with concern."Or get _you_ fired, am I?"

And Vegeta frowned with confusion in the most charmingly innocent way.

"Brawls are quite common in the Saiyan army," he finally managed to say. And tossed back another shot as a reward for articulating something other than choking laughter at her expense. If she was worried about decking a Saiyan, she clearly hadn't seen how Saiyans settled disputes as trivial as "What happened to my toothpaste?"

The heat of the alcohol burning holes into his esophagus had grown comforting.

Bulma rested her head on her palm, a kittenish smile blooming on her face.

He tensed.

"Good." She crossed her legs, and Vegeta finally noticed the display of legs beside him, her short dress riding up her thighs just enough to reveal the top of silky black thigh hi's. His eyes fixed on it. "Because I was thinking I could show you what I was wearing tonight." Her voice dipped low and husky, scooting another shot glass toward him. " _Under_ my dress."

Vegeta's eyes widened. "Don't humans usually have dinner before they see each other's undergarments?" It wasn't that Vegeta cared about human social contracts inasmuch as his grip on control was slipping fast. Though he wouldn't have begrudged her food.

The look she gave him was scorching with sensual heat. "You offering to buy me dinner?" Fingers slipping through her soft hair, the weight of her cheek in her palm, her smile was ruthlessly smoldering. "I already know what I want for dessert."

Vegeta's lungs stopped processing air.

She bat her lashes.

He tossed back another shot.

Bulma leaned forward until her lips almost fluttered against his ear. "How long has it been since you've had a woman put you in her mouth eagerly," she murmured, slowly grasping his hand, which rested against the bar top, and dragged it slowly up her thigh. Vegeta's heart slammed in his chest as his fingertips trailed up the inside of her soft thighs, leaving the silk of her hose as it ascended higher to tread bare skin. "Or felt a woman get wet for you?" His fingertips brushed the lace of her panties.

Vegeta choked on his drink.

"Don't forget," the woman whispered huskily, lips quivering against his ear. "I swallow."

Vegeta stood abruptly, the bar stool falling to the floor behind him.

Whether or not he was running away or dragging her home was unclear to either of them, because it was at that exact moment that a familiar voice called out:

"Bulma!"

The whites of Bulma's eyes showed round, and she halted in place.

All Bulma saw was Goku's cheerful grin before she was enveloped in a hug, a very real obstacle in between her and the man she was relentlessly trying to bang.

Hand resting on her shoulder companionably, Goku smiled. "How are you? Been awhile!"

Over her shoulder, Vegeta glared death at the back of Goku's head.

Bulma blinked. "Goku?" A frown marred her face. "Aren't you supposed to be with ChiChi right now?"

Her best friend's husband laughed sheepishly. "Welllll…"

"Goku," Bulma bit, feeling the oddest compulsion to stomp with indignation at the obstructions between her and Vegeta's equipment the universe kept sending her way.

"She's at home. She's putting the baby to sleep. It's really no big deal," he assured her, laughing nervously.

It was obviously a lie that he was requesting she mercifully overlook.

Bulma had very little mercy to give.

Vegeta made himself very apparent at Bulma's side as Bulma continued to glare.

"Hi, there. I'm Goku." Goku made a face. "Kakarot," he amended, pointing at himself. "That's my Saiyan-given name. Who're you?"

"General Vegeta," came a low growl. Vegeta's eyes raked Goku with intensity.

"General," Goku responded instantly, saluting.

"Goku," Bulma chomped, interrupting the routine of respect with disrespect for all things getting in the way of taking home the very fine hunk of Saiyan man meat at her side. "Why aren't you at _home_?"

"Ah, well, I spent a few months on Yardrat, you know—"

"Yardrat?" Vegeta said with surprise.

"—Yeah, and, uh, I was a feeling a bit starship lagged."

Why was he _here?!_

"I told ChiChi to put Gohan down for the night and that I was going to take a real quick walk."

" _Why are you here!?"_ Bulma waved her arms manically.

"ChiChi really wouldn't want me to say," Goku responded weakly under the heavy weight of Bulma's wild eyes.

Vegeta would not stop staring at Goku. " _You,_ on Yardrat?" Vegeta felt both jealousy and interest twist inside him.

"Yep. And I'm back on Earth for a little while before they ship me out again."

Bulma's eyes ticked back and forth between the two of them and the weird vibe she was getting from them, especially on Vegeta's end.

"They keep giving me all these training missions," Goku complained. Vegeta's lips curled down at the statement. Goku missed it. "I'd really rather just be fighting, you know?"

"Well, that's very, very interesting," Bulma said unconvincingly, "but we have to be going now." She nudged Vegeta with her elbow, hard.

"Oh! Were you guys having a drink? I don't think I can drink anymore for awhile." He rubbed his neck tiredly. "The Yardratians enhance their psychic powers with this really powerful liquor called _nes'kaat._ I've drank so much of it these past few months." Goku chuckled, though hollowly, looking a little green. "So, _so_ much _nes'kaat._ "

Vegeta snorted, his arms crossing, sneering. "You don't drink much, do you?"

Bulma's frown deepened as she turned her displeasure onto Vegeta. Why was he engaging him? She and Vegeta should be mouthing each other's genitals right now!

"It interferes with my fighting performance," Goku said simply. "After awhile, I guess I just got used to it. I could put down a dozen pints of that stuff by the end of my deployment and still be standing. They built a statue of me outside the training center for it and everything!" Goku laughed good-naturedly. "What did they always say? _'Lose yourself in the first sip, find yourself in the second.'"_

Bulma's mouth hung open. Momentarily forgetting the urgency of her mission to get dick, she stared. "A dozen pints?! That stuff is, like, 1000% concentrated." She stared. "It tastes like spicy rubbing alcohol that someone farted in. How are you not _dead_?"

"You know what they say in the Army: Try to kill us, we just come back stronger!" Goku made a cheerful little thumbs up. "Must have just increased my tolerance!"

"But Goku, what about Chi—"

Vegeta's arms crossed. "Big deal. On Sector 9, we drank that stuff by the barrel."

"Oh yeah? Congrats," Goku said happily, furthering Vegeta's ire.

"But _Goku_ , ChiCh—"

Vegeta's lips ticked up as a plan hatched. "Maybe we could see just whose tolerance is better."

"Oh, no," Bulma was saying from behind them, waving her hands back and forth in alarm. "Oh, no no no no no—"

Vegeta grinned evilly, aura flaring like blue smoke about him as the shadows washed his face hellishly.

"Sit down, Kakarot, and let's have a drink."

…

Bulma pooled her head in her arms on the bar and groaned as the Saiyans beside her yelled in tandem for the upteenth time tonight.

"ONE TWO THREE DRINK!"

The Saiyans sandwiching her knocked back another shot, and she stared boredly at the wall, head lazing on her open palm.

"A walmartian? Please. I ripped one's head off in my sleep," Vegeta was boasting. "They are substandard creatures on a second-rate planet in an inferior solar system."

She sighed noisily through her nose.

After the argument about killing things had reached heated levels, Vegeta stood and stumbled to the bathroom, ending the challenge in a draw as nature called. As soon as Vegeta—concentrating hard—had successfully made it a few steps towards the restrooms, Bulma leapt from her chair and started furiously shaking Goku.

"How could you?!"

Goku just smiled up at her, eyes unfocused. Vegeta was still dragging himself towards the bathroom behind them.

"I was going to have my way with that man!"

Goku blinked at her. "…What?"

She groaned noisily and plopped back down in her seat.

"Ruined. All ruined. Saiyans," Bulma muttered pitifully into her arms. "I knew this would happen. Why did I assume otherwise?" Bulma's head shot up and she smacked her hand on the bar. "Bartender? I need a _nes'kaat_ of my own."

They heard the bathroom door finally shut behind Vegeta.

With the drink curled in her manicured hands, Bulma knocked it back grimly. It tasted like farts.

"And to think," she cried out. "I look so hot under this dress!"

…

I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR HUSBAND, Bulma typed inside a pool of streetlight, scraping gum off her shoes.

 _Well, that makes two of us,_ was her only response from ChiChi.

It didn't make her feel any better. And it didn't make any sense, either.

 _Why is he here?_

It was a long minute before ChiChi responded.

The phone was typing.

…

And erasing.

And typing.

…

And then finally—

… _I sent him out to get condoms._

Bulma felt she might crush her phone in her fist.

It took Bulma a few moments to breathe through the red haze of her vision, smash the caps lock button, and respond with arthritic-like claws.

YOU!…I ONLY HAVE A DOZEN DIFFERENT KINDS AND FLAVORS THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO LEND YOU

YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH NEEDS! ChiChi defended.

Bulma stomped all the way up the stairs.

Goku had, at least, helped dump Vegeta into the cab and then fireman carried him up to Bulma's apartment, dumping him serendipitously onto Bulma's couch as if he couldn't be any happier to help. And far too steady-footed for Bulma's comfort. Goku really hadn't been kidding about his tolerance for _nes'kaat._

And because he was still smiling, feeling generously vindictive, Bulma slapped a handful of cherry-flavored and light-up condoms into his large hand and shoved him towards the door. Goku's lips pulled down a little as he realized that if Bulma knew, ChiChi knew, and he'd either be out dinner or sex for revealing that his wife had as little restraint as the rest of them.

Bulma, after all, had no idea where the _other_ jerk lived. She glared at his profile, face slack and bodyweight heavy in her couch cushions. Goku gave a small wave and shut the front door quietly behind him.

She sighed, turning and making her way slowly to the kitchen in her apartment. She sat her purse down, slowly toed off her heels. Went to the closet and pulled out a blanket. And draped it carelessly over the very drunk Saiyan on her couch, crossing her arms with a huff.

Bulma fell back onto the couch with another sigh and just looked at him.

His hair draped over the couch arm.

She harrumphed at the lump on her couch.

And then tentatively reached out and stroked his cheek with her thumb.

He didn't move. The back of her hand drifted over the smooth skin of his cheek. "Idiot," she murmured. And tucked the blanket around him. His boots came off, but only stubbornly—even his personal affects were aggravating—and his head was heavy as she shoved a pillow under it. She cursed with annoyance at the extra work he was making her do.

And just as she turned away to put herself to bed, a hand closed around her wrist and yanked her backward.

She caught herself against Vegeta's chest, inches away from his lips.

He smiled, the lids of his eyes heavy as he watched her. "Even drunk," his voice deep and arrogant, "I know _exactly_ what I want to do with you."

Bulma's heart dropped into her stomach at his bold gesture. But she was a woman with standards, so she performed her disapproval the way many women do: with very dramatic, disapproving language. "If you think something's going to happen now, you're as wrong as you are drunk." Her eyes ticked over him. "I'm not very happy with you right now."

Vegeta's eyes were half-lidded as a dangerous smile curled his mouth. "I'll let you tie me up."

Her brows slammed down. "I went out of my way for you tonight." She jabbed him a few times with her finger to make her point. "I am not going to share a single inch of flesh with you! You wouldn't even properly appreciate it. Or remember!" Vegeta sat up a little, though it strained him, and crossed his arms behind his head, biceps bulging. His smirk had grown even more teasing, and even through all her blustering, she couldn't help but be totally, UGH, _charmed_ by the whole hot mess of him.

"This isn't how I wanted our first time to be," she whined. "I was going to show off the lingerie I bought!"

Vegeta was encouraging. "I'll sober up someday."

"I'm going to kill Goku," Bulma stated with a sigh.

"You and me both," quipped Vegeta cheerfully.

Bulma snorted and uncurled herself from his side.

Vegeta watched her round behind walk away with rebellious gratification. "Not even a peek of your panties?"

"You gotta earn it first," Bulma snapped, crossing her arms and sending him a look.

"I'll kill Kakarot for you."

Bulma's eyes widened. She walked herself back, sitting on the edge of the couch. "Don't do that," she said soothingly, placing her hand on his. "Wouldn't want you—or, er, Goku—to get hurt."

"I'm going to fight him anyway."

"Okay. After you get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay."

Bulma then smiled askant at him. "So, how did I look tonight?" She asked flirtatiously, grabbing beneath his breast plate collar and tugging on it to demonstrate the seriousness of the question. Firmly.

Threateningly.

She had to hold herself back from running her hands over all those chest muscles.

Vegeta stretched, all slinky muscle and power. "Delicious," he sighed.

"Good enough…to eat?" She leaned forward, a come-hither smile unfurling on her face.

A scary smirk stretched his face. "Oh yes."

She felt something brush her hip and swatted at it. It was furry and agile.

It settled for lying innocently against her hip.

Clearing her throat and ignoring the tail beside her, she regrouped."I'm wearing the sexiest lingerie tonight," she said coquettishly. And let one of the dress straps slip from her shoulder. "Oops," she said, blinking with surprise and batting her eyelashes.

She leaned even further forward until she was lying flat against his chest, cleavage squished against his breastplate, filling his vision.

Vegeta stared at the bare flesh with wide eyes.

Her lips brushed his ear. "I wanted you all night long," she admitted, and Vegeta felt his cock stir to life clumsily, struggling up through the drunken stupor. "It's too bad," she was saying, the dress slipping further down the slope of her breasts, and his eyes followed its path hungrily, "you chose a drinking contest," she chomped, "over me," and she stood abruptly, smothering him with a pillow.

He struggled, extricating himself from the pillow and the tangle of the blanket with more trouble than he'd like to admit, and found her scowling at him.

"Are you watching?" She only asked him sternly, arms crossed over that delicious, opulent cleavage, staring at him with a disapproval he was too inebriated to comprehend. "'Cuz you're not getting a second chance like this again."

Vegeta nodded with something very close to meekness. He didn't know what he was agreeing to, only that she was mad at him and he didn't like it.

"Good."

With no warning, Bulma grabbed the hem of her skirt and dragged it teasingly up her thighs.

Slowly, the silky dress, clinging to her thighs, rose over the swell of her hips and revealed a velvet garter and the triangle of her panties.

"Mmm," he said stupidly.

Bulma turned slowly, led by the swing of her hips, to exhibit the backside of her panties, which stretched across her round ass.

Vegeta's dick rose like a hand thrusting out of a fresh grave.

Vegeta blinked as she shoved her skirt back over her hips. Suddenly, she was walking away. "Goodnight, eight nine." She was half way across the living room. "Adorable idiot," he might have heard her growl under her breath.

"Nothing more? Your loss," he recovered, smiling, and draped his arm over his eyes to sleep.

Bulma, stalling, watched him from over her shoulder.

And, after a second, despite her best-laid plans, she smiled.

And then stripped, alone in her room, before turning out the light.

…

A wastebasket thoughtfully placed beside him. A glass of water on the coffee table. His boots in a heap on the floor. His pillow smelled like a woman's shampoo, and the blanket was plush and sinfully soft, unlike the rough stuff they handed out in the Army.

Nothing was as it should be.

Vegeta abruptly sat up.

He was on his feet before he knew it, staggering around the room, blinking painfully at the sunlight spilling in. His thoughts still murky, he lurched to the nearest doorway—

And a woman's round ass stretching a pair of panties stared back at him.

He gripped the doorway with clawed fingers.

The woman lay on her side, her shoulder rising and falling softly with sleep, the bare skin of her back unmasked by the comforter that had twisted around her and draped about her waist but failed to cover her behind and the bottom of a foot that poked out beneath. A tuft of turquoise hair jutted out from the edge of the blanket.

Suddenly, reality seemed much too compromising.

Vegeta shoved his feet in his boots, almost pitching forward into the wall, and fell out the door.

The morning breeze ruffling his hair as he loped to the train, his haggard look earning a few glances from passersby.

The events of last night were like glimpses of terrain committed to memory in the middle of battle—only the bare basics required of the mind to survive but brought about by survival in exquisite clarity.

Over there was Bulma, in her slinky dress, her fist arcing toward a Saiyan; over yonder was Vegeta's hand dragged by a small one at his wrist, up the silk of her inner thigh and brushing the lace of her underwear; way, way too much _nes'kaat,_ paired with an argument about the values of evisceration with another Saiyan; a sharp right took him to the view of grime and dust on stairs, dangled over a shoulder; and over there was the black hole where all his other memories fell into.

The emptiness of the consciousness that should have been there but simply wasn't was haunted by the echoes of a woman's voice: _"Adorable idiot."_

Furious heat stole into Vegeta's cheeks.

Vegeta ground the palm of his hands into his temples as the train sped to the Saiyan military complex and wished a grisly death on everyone and everything.

…

He didn't know how they knew, but they knew.

Vegeta stared down a box of condoms resting on top his desk.

He incinerated them easily.

"You're gonna regret that," Toma said as he sauntered by, a rush of ash blustering out the doorway. "Now you have to go face a cashier and buy some."

"I didn't think you had it in you, boss." Raditz popped some gum in his mouth, suddenly loitering inside his doorway. "I thought you were more of the evil villain type. You know, incapable of feeling empathy for others."

"Like, autistic?" Asked Toma.

"No, how insensitive of you. Like, stupid."

"Who the hell put those on my desk?" Vegeta's voice churned out like gravel. Last night's jaunt with enough alcohol to kill a human made Vegeta even scarier looking than normal.

Raditz and Toma shared a look. They both shrugged. "We didn't do it."

"Then who did?" One eyebrow crooked questioningly. Dangerously.

Vegeta tossed the toothbrush and travel sized toothpaste onto his desk, where they rolled to accompany the seared remains of someone's thoughtful gift, having cleaned the taste of _nes'kaat_ and bitter failure from his mouth this morning. "And why? I don't need them," Vegeta grit, crossing his arms over his chest. And then flushed, realizing his error.

"Why look a gift Namekian in the mouth?" Raditz stiffened at Vegeta's glare. "Sir," he amended.

Vegeta's eyes fell on Toma. "I don't know!" Toma yelled with fright. And then turned to Raditz, whispering. "And really, who'd have the balls?—"

Raditz interrupted Toma with a slap on the back, shutting him up and laughing forcefully. "What Toma means to say, sir, is that we'll get right on finding—"

"—out who put those awful, vulgar things on your desk," Toma offered cheerfully, "—that you'll never use—"

Vegeta was giving them a look like he was gonna grind them up and use them as the condiments in his next sandwich, and the two Saiyan's mouths snapped shut, and they instinctively started backpedalling.

"We'll be waiting in the training room for you, sir," Raditz assured him, and then booked it out the door, dragging Toma by the shirt, Raditz' overflowing hair flattening at the top of the doorway on his way out.

Vegeta thumbed his chin. If not Raditz or Toma, then who? Someone at the bar?

Vegeta's heart raced. How much did they know?

And what would they think?

…

He saw the shock of her hair, and without thinking, slowed at the wall of windows.

She sat at a desk in the open hangar, thick goggles on top her head, chewing on a pen and facing down a blueprint. Once or twice, she scribbled some notes in a binder.

Despite what he told himself, he wasn't here by accident.

He just watched.

There wasn't any indication that the same saucy minx that slipped his hand under her dress, cleavage nearly spilling from her neckline, was the same Earthling nerd hunkered down over some math in a starship hangar. She looked small in the expansive space, other engineers milling about, her skin white in the bright light, clearly puzzled as she worked out astronomical algorithms he could only guess at. The whole of her attention on one innocuous mystery before her that only she could unravel and disclose.

Only when his scouter buzzed did he remember where he'd been going.

…

Bulma watched Vegeta from a perch behind a low wall, her hands propping up her face as she smiled dreamily.

"Mmm," came a sound from her throat, and with contentment, she watched the man across the yard peel off his shirt and toss it on the ground before pivoting, flowing right back into the sparring motions with the punching bag. Her head lazed on her palm, sneakered toes on the concrete step. "Juuuuust like that."

"What are you doing?" Came a man's accusatory voice from behind her.

Bulma looked over her shoulders, eyebrows inching upwards with mild curiosity.

A tall Saiyan with long hair narrowed his eyes at her. His companion just watched her with his hands on his hips, befuddled. The sun was beginning to settle into dusk, blazing orange behind them, the city spread out around them on the rooftop of the Saiyan military complex.

Bulma's expression hardened at the intruder, and she shot him a look of her own. "None of your business," she replied primly. And went back to ogling the lone Saiyan whose muscles rippled and jumped with every movement.

"Doesn't look a whole lot like nothing."

She sighed noisily, and then hopped off the step.

The tall Saiyan pointed at Vegeta, back at her, then back at Vegeta. "You were looking at him."

"Was not." She wiped her hands on her coveralls and began walking across the training yard, empty at the end of the day.

"Were too," he scoffed, and his boots scuttled on the concrete as he caught up behind her. "Why are you watching him?" Raditz's face grew shocked and then pinched with suspicion. "Are you a spy?"

The other Saiyan gasped.

Bulma's lips flattened. "No," she replied with annoyance, eyes flicking over them. "Just… admiring the view." And, with a grin curling her face, she shot them a wink, and then turned the corner of the yard, flinging open the doors to the hangar and walking into the dark.

The men stopped in their tracks, gaping as the door closed before them.

…

"I owe you one," came a voice from the shadows, and Bulma glanced from the corner of her eyes but continued walking.

"Yes, you do," she only said, heels rapping.

A black mass moving liquidly through the shadows appeared at her side, and, against her better judgment, she stole a glance at him. _Ugh_ , he was still hot. That hadn't changed in the last 24 hours. Bulma hoped briefly that he'd train on the roof after work tomorrow so she could see him with his shirt off again. That was probably as far as they'd get with their shirts off at this point.

Bulma had just left a dinner date with Eighteen, which she'd wasted whining into her noodles and slapping her hands on the table as she rehashed the previous night's flop with such despair that the frightened waiter had assured her that her meal was free.

"Stalker," she grumbled in Vegeta's direction.

He looked at the ground uncomfortably, cape drifting at his calves.

"I hope your pride is suitably wounded." She glanced sidelong at him. " _Painfully_ so."

His eyes drifted to the ground, the sidewalk towing ceaselessly beneath them."It wasn't supposed to be like that," he admitted, gritting his teeth through the humiliation of what was dangerously close to an apology _and_ an admission of guilt.

Well, he wouldn't have felt like the night was ruined if he had _won_ the drinking contest, which also burned him.

She watched him as he grew even more uncomfortably stiff. His jaw was tight, his straight eyebrows cutting through the shadows, the streetlight drifting over his strong cheekbones. Finally, she sighed forcefully. "Well, what do we do now?" Bulma snorted, throwing her hands up in despair and readjusting her purse on her shoulder. "We can't do a casual thing right. We can't do a first date right." Her blue eyes were clear and bright with worry. "Should we even keep trying?"

He looked the other way. "What are you doing right now?"

She came to a stop at the intersection. "What are you proposing?"

"Can I…" He stalled. What did Earthling women want? What did _women_ want? "Take you for dinner?"

"I don't want dinner," Bulma said firmly.

Vegeta's face went slack.

"I mean," she clarified, clasping her hands together, "I don't want you to buy me dinner." Her finger lifted. "I don't want you to buy me a drink, either."

Vegeta harrumphed and crossed his arms, hiding anxiety that he was being rejected behind a wall of indifference which maybe she was the only person in the universe capable of seeing through.

Accidentally phone sex calling a stranger wasn't exactly the stuff of fate.

She stepped closer, putting her hand on his arm supportively. "I don't need a first date or whatever, Vegeta. You don't have to do anything elaborate, or, or against your nature, or whatever. You don't even have to buy me gifts or shower me with affection, crazy as that sounds." A smile flit briefly cross her face. And then her brows knit with seriousness. "Maybe dating, and, and…normal…stuff, just isn't going to work for us." Her voice rose with passion. "Maybe that's not _us_. We don't _have_ to date. We can just…hang out." Bulma sighed, looking past him, into the night. Then her eyes found his. "If you're willing to try again, I just…I want your attention on me. Not on a glass of _nesk'aat_ or Goku." She stepped closer. "We'll just be real with each other from now on. In fact, I'll tell you what I want," her bangs brushed rakishly over her eyes, "and then you tell me if you're willing to give it to me."

The fur on his tail bristled.

She watched him pointedly. "Ready?"

Eyes fixed on her, he nodded.

She took a deep breath. "I want to take you home," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

AN: FROM AUTHOR, TO READER:

SURPRISE

AN UPDATE THAT DIDN'T TAKE 3 YEARS

& IT'S X RATED

* * *

Bulma and Vegeta sat quietly, politely, next to each other on the train.

Despite it, Bulma's heart was thumping. She didn't quite have a strategy yet, but she was much too delighted to care.

The train passengers watched Vegeta warily, his military uniform drawing attention, but he just stared out the window with well-practiced coolness. He was like a space cowboy, all narrowed eyes and restrained violence, a presence too big for the cramped train car.

Bulma was beginning to feel like an archaeologist, digging up and dusting off all these clues that, pieced together, would make sense of the divide between Vegeta's public and private personalities. And like an academic, only she found her subject utterly absorbing.

Here was a man who liked to think he was untouchable, and here was Bulma, just a girl who liked to put her hands all over everything.

Bulma shifted her weight, leaning her elbow on the armrest between them, and stared shamelessly at him.

Vegeta's eyes slid to their corners to regard her.

Even in the wan fluorescents of the train car, after a full day's work and the hour creeping toward midnight, her exuberance was fresh. Her eyes scrunched with the force of her mischief as she smiled at him.

Vegeta watched her warily.

"You haven't even asked me what kind of panties I have on today, eight-nine."

He tamped down the heat spreading through his cheeks. Finally, Vegeta muttered, "You don't like to keep quiet, do you?"

"You're one to talk." She rested the back of her head against the window. "You're awfully chatty when the subject's my lady parts."

Vegeta was struggling with a comeback when he felt her lips at his ear.

"Maybe you need to shut me up yourself?"

She could feel Vegeta's shoulder tense against her chest.

"Maybe…." Her voice, husky with possibility, trailed. "Your hand on my mouth?" She brushed her lips deliberately against the curl of his ear. "Or…your __dick__ , in my mouth?" Her breath feathered against his neck, the pause heavy between them. "Ask me what color panties I have on tonight, eight-nine."

Their hips were separated by dips in the seat cushions, only as close as two strangers on a train, but even still they suddenly seemed impossibly close to Vegeta. His eyes flicked over the car passengers wildly, one by one. All of them looking in other directions, out the windows, at the walls, staring emptily, tiredly, a million miles away in thought, having lost interest in the Earthling and the Saiyan who shadowed her at the back of the car.

Helplessly, his gaze raked down Bulma's crossed legs and the hem of her short gray dress.

He hated to admit it, but he was losing.

Nothing about his relationship with her—besides their role-playing, anyway—left him feeling in control. All this time, he'd been avoiding the lusty Saiyan chase in order to avoid being associated with the vulgar and third-class among them. Vegeta considered himself a first-rate Saiyan, aggressively pursuing perfectionism so that he could remind everyone just how remarkable he was. Except Vegeta was finding that the usual way he went about rubbing everyone's noses in his exceptionalism was clashing with some very Saiyan and very unexplored desires.

Bulma's face fell as she watched his pinched features as his crisis rolled over him. "Relax," Bulma murmured, tentatively reaching out and squeezing his hand. "We don't have to make anything more to this than there is," she assured him. "No dating, right? No sexy stuff, even, if you don't want." Plaintively, she held her palms out in front of her, her voice rising. "We'll keep it over the phone. Or we can just hang out, and, and, uh...play cards?"

Nervousness weighed heavy on her at Vegeta's continued silence."I'm sorry, have I been coming on to strong? I apologize, I've been pushy—"

Bulma brought with her a boundless sense of adventure that he just hadn't felt for a __long__ time. It was that adrenaline rush that he was addicted to in the special forces, after all. Why shouldn't it translate to his personal life? Why couldn't he enjoy that same heart-stopping, heart-soaring insanity, offered by no one else but Bulma?

And hanging onto that feeling by a thread, Vegeta pulled at the yarn.

Vegeta's head turned, and he rested his own lips at her ear.

And then he asked, rough and low:

"What panties are you wearing…Bulma?"

Her eyes widened.

It was a husky rumble which filled the hollow space between her thighs with a sharp ache.

A defiant smirk grew crooked on Vegeta's face as he watched her.

Bulma pulled back, meeting Vegeta's eyes.

The lights flickered as they shot deeper into the tunnels under the city, plunging away from the Saiyan hold in the military sector, everything about the city and Earth that Vegeta had so far ever known.

On Bulma, a conspiratorial smile blossomed.

She leaned into him, her lips hovering right over the curl of his ear.

"Purple," she answered.

…

The platform the train doors opened upon was crowded, and she led him up a quick flight of steps that delivered them to the street. The wind raked through their hair, the smell of approaching rain, pavement, and the perfume of fresh earth threaded through it.

Without doing anything out of the ordinary, Vegeta drew eyes, and everyone kept out of his way. He wasn't like most Saiyans or aliens, unnaturally tall or eye-catchingly non-humanoid. But he swept through the crowd beside her unjostled, watching vigilantly ahead, a wolf stalking through swans.

She led him to her apartment building, pressing the elevator button, a healthy space nestled between them as they rode it up.

Her front door opened with a soft inhale, and she flipped on the lights.

Bulma set her purse on the kitchen table. "Can I get you anything?"

"No," he said, clipped, placing his scouter on the table beside her purse, tugging off his gloves, one finger after another, then drawing his breastplate over his head.

A small lamp had been left on in the living room. A cat curled on the sofa, peering at them sleepily through slanted eyelids.

Vegeta was an odd sight in her little space, a completely different man than the one last sprawled on her couch reeking of a holy Yardratian liquor.

That man now stood stiffly, conflicted, in the middle of her apartment.

Vegeta retreated into himself when other people imposed on him. It came off as utter disregard and disdain for anyone but himself, but it was a wall, just a wall he had constructed, brick by brick and up to his head, to keep himself from looking foolish.

Bulma took a deep breath.

She was a woman who lacked a clear-cut strategy or an endgame, but she could improvise.

Jumpy, he watched her walk toward him in her form-fitting dress, swerving right past him to the kitchen, eclipsing the light of the refrigerator as she searched inside. She cracked the top off a beer. "I'll order a pizza." She handed him a frosty bottle, which he took silently. "In the meantime…."

She plucked something from the tabletop, turned, and handed it to him with a gentle smile.

"Here," she only said, holding out his scouter, her blue eyes pinning his. "Now tell me __exactly__ what you want to do to me."

…

Shoulders propped against the side of her bed and a beefy arm draped over his knee, Vegeta hooked the scouter over his ear and ran his hands through his hair with a sigh.

On the other side of the full-sized bed, fingers toying with her plush ivory rug, Bulma sat on the floor with her legs curled under her, hope tugging lightly at the corners of her lips.

The bed separated the pair, a wall that kept them safe, that kept the phone fantasy intact.

"Thank you for coming," she said into her walky. Her fingers slid to her ankles, lightly dragging furrows through the velvet of her suede boots with her fingernails.

"I wanted to," he assured her neutrally.

"How was work?"

Vegeta just made a scoffing noise that commented on the emptiness of the question.

"I went out to dinner with a friend after work," Bulma continued anyway. "I'm glad you were stalking me tonight, eight-nine." She smiled indulgently. "I wasn't __trying__ to show off tonight, but I'm glad I chose this dress so that you could see me in it. Do you think I'm sexy in this dress, eight-nine?"

With her familiar husky voice over the line, Vegeta relaxed his weight into the mattress.

"Yes," he answered, voice dipping. He gazed out over the unfamiliar living room. "All I can think about is your ass in my face when you stood up in front of me on the train."

Bulma grinned. "Yeah? Do you like my ass?"

He grunted, and it was a deep, primal agreement. "I want to grab it in my hands and drag my teeth across it," Vegeta admitted, stretching his arm across the edge of the mattress, falling back into their roles more easily than expected. "I just want to eat it."

Bulma's eyebrows winged. "Oh? Are you an ass man? How about my chest?" Bulma looked down, fingered the deep v of her neckline. "I have nice breasts, too, you know."

Vegeta smirked, straightening his legs, and leaned his head back against her mattress. "I really want to feel what that dress feels like under my hands." Vegeta looked out the living room window, past the blinds. Only darkness staring back. "The feel of your skin under the dress."

"I want you to," she admitted with a trace of a forlorn sigh. Bulma gazed out at the inky blackness waiting outside her windows to devour her. "For so long, I've wondered what you looked like," she admitted. "What you might…feel like. Now that I've met you, none of that's changed. I just want to touch you all the time," she gushed, "and I want your hands all over me." Bulma looked into the darkness. "You're so handsome, eight-nine. I don't know what I want more: to touch you, or for you to touch me."

A rush of feeling upended Vegeta.

"Every time I see you in a dress," he husked, "I think you'd look so good on top of me."

It was Bulma's turn to flush, and she ducked her head, looking up at her pink bedroom wall. "Vegeta," she said, and his real name on her lips jolted him, "I can't help but think one of us on top the other __period__ is going to look __really__ hot."

He snorted, leaning back cozily.

"Well, if I were on top of a man," she posited, with a warning in her tone, "he better not __dare__ think I'm just a poke-and-hump. I deserve more than that. He has to worship all of me before he gets any farther. Men don't take enough time to appreciate all the terrain of a woman's body a mouth can tread, if they bother at all."

"That wouldn't be an issue," Vegeta conceded, aggression prowling underneath.

"Yeah?" She breathed, her hand skimming her smooth calves.

Forgetting himself, he leaned forward, eyes narrowing predatorily. "My hands would be all over you."

"Yeah?"

"The lips under those panties under my tongue."

Her heart stopped and restarted. "Yeah?"

The bed was a wall that kept him safe.

But Vegeta suddenly remembered that he didn't actually like to play it safe.

Vegeta felt a thrill skipping from neuron to neuron, a heady wine singing through him that was becoming more and more deafening.

Rogue desire.

"I want to eat you until you're shaking," and his voice was a silky, predatory thing that settled between her thighs and trembled.

Bulma's wide eyes rolled to the ceiling, blinking at the ceiling fan with disbelief. __Holy shit,__ she mouthed.

Vegeta's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "And I'll stay down there as long as it takes."

"It wouldn't take long," Bulma replied weakly.

Vegeta had grown deadly serious. "I would eat you so precisely and so thoroughly you couldn't walk right the rest of the night."

Bulma was having trouble catching her breath.

"Bulma," Vegeta said, and his tone became more solemn. "How long's it been?"

Through a haze of desire, Bulma's eyes widened as she awkwardly thought of __him__.

Her voice was small. "Maybe a year," she said. And even then, Yamcha hadn't ever really enthusiastic about it. She hadn't finished, and it had been more of an IOU cashed in and a flirt with foreplay that had quickly been exchanged for a quick and dull tour through missionary.

Vegeta's self-control balanced on a precipice. "If I have to eat your pussy everyday to make up for what he's done to you," he promised with a snarl, "I will."

"Okay," Bulma only croaked, patting her face, feeling feverish.

"Fuck, Bulma," Vegeta finally husked, his hand gripping himself from under his suit. "The things I would do to you."

"The things I want you to do to me," she admitted brokenly. "The things I want to do to you," she whispered, hand sliding into her underwear. "Sometimes I think about finding you in your office…or being taken by you in a star ship…Is it wrong to want you this badly?"

She'd been daydreaming these kinds of encounters for a long time—what woman didn't fantasize sometimes?—constructing a certain kind of man to accomplish them. For months and months through her slump with Yamcha. For years, even. But the man she'd been seeing didn't turn out to be the man for her at all. And now here he was; and between them, the knife of desire. "Sometimes, at work, or before bed, it's all I can think about, you between my legs…." Bulma's fingers slipped under her panties. "Vegeta, make me cum."

"Gladly," he growled, ki rippling against his skin.

With her head lolling on the side of the bed, eyes half-lidded, lips parted with desire, and pale skin gleaming, he watched her hand slide back and forth under the crotch of her panties, her knuckles brushing lace. A pink walky clutched in her other hand, waiting for the man on the other end to start and finish the game between them. His eyes imprinted every detail: her skirt cinched round her hips, her throat exposed as her head fell back on the mattress with pleasure. And even though he never wanted to stop watching, he burned with a need so Saiyan and savage that the notion of class seemed very far behind him.

"Bulma," came a voice so near, and her eyelids opened languidly, expecting the thick darkness staring back.

It took a moment to process the strong legs in front of her.

She jumped, her legs gathering beneath her. _"_ _ _Vegeta!"__

And then she was scooped up. Their weight caused the mattress to bounce them as they tumbled onto her bed, Vegeta's face hovering just a few inches from her own. She blinked, pressing her head back into the pillow with surprise.

And then he slid down her body and knelt at the foot of the bed, smiling with dangerous, deep, dark intent.

Reaching out with thick, muscled arms, she watched as he hooked his fingers in the hips of her panties with devastating slowness.

She wasn't breathing. She just stared at him, chest heaving, gripping the pillow beneath her.

And grabbed his hands, stalling them.

She met his eyes, needing something. An agreement, an understanding.

Vegeta waited respectfully, a rare submission in his eyes cohabiting with the aggression that was inseparable from the Saiyan spirit.

Coming to a decision, Bulma shoved at his hands, urging him wordlessly to take her clothes off quickly.

The silk of her panties glided down her thighs, catching on her calves. When they had pooled at her feet, Vegeta, eyes pinning her, removed her feet from their tangle.

And then he bent forward, closing the distance between them, and put his mouth to the inside of her knee.

Bulma hissed at the contrariness of his softness with the hard need coursing through her and that emanated off of him despite his control, of the feel of someone touching her privately for the first time in so long.

His mouth trailed up her thigh, hands sliding under the backs of her legs, and her knees yawned open with acceptance.

Bulma's brain couldn't make thoughts.

His tongue, hot, slow, glided up the tender skin of her inner thigh, his smooth palms cradling the backs of her legs, inching closer and closer to the naked and exposed juncture between her thighs. A moan stuck in Bulma's throat, and her belly clenched with anticipation.

Vegeta ran his hands up until he clasped her hips, giving her one last searing glance, before his tongue cut straight up through her folds.

She let out a sharp cry, clenching the pillow underneath her head as the heat of Vegeta's mouth enveloped her completely.

Bulma tore the pillow from under her head and buried her face in it.

Eventually, dropping the pillow, her hands found purchase in his hair, her back arching to give him access to it all. And Vegeta didn't stop, his fingers occasionally joining as he worked, his palm skimming up her belly to graze her nipples, which earned him a hard buck from her hips. Gradually it slid down to the steely length under his underwear, working deeper and deeper and deeper until her butt was jerking off the bed, his member in his hand, stroking from tip to base with one exacting thrust after the other, and Bulma was flooded with feeling and cumming, her cries swelling through the room, and then he was cumming too, leaning his forehead against her lower belly and groaning her name and cursing and thinking only of her and her and her and her.

His broad, arched back moved with his deep breaths, pinning her hips, and it took Bulma herself a minute to come back down to earth, her fingers splayed absently in his hair.

Gently, she turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand, catching him adjusting the waist of his underwear and buttoning his pants, the thick v of his abdomen peeking out above it.

Vegeta looked up, and their eyes met.

She only smiled, pretty round cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling with adventure. She chuckled softly over her round shoulder, cheek lazing in her palm, eyelids heavy with sensuality.

It was the most open, genuine, and happy—

the most beautiful—

he'd ever seen anyone.

He fell onto his back on the other side of the bed, pillowing his head atop his arm.

He turned his head to look at her.

There was space between them, an uncertainty as solid as the bed. A pause. An unknown.

A wall with a door.

Hands folding under her cheek as she relaxed into her pillow, she just smiled at him.

Vegeta reached across the bed, his hand palm up between them.

Bulma's hand slipped into his.

And breached the unknown.

…

"What panties are you wearing?"

Bulma put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile, but also to muffle her answer. "Bright pink. Just normal cotton panties today. I make them look good, of course. You?"

A snort was her only answer.

"Where are you?" She whispered, turning away from all the engineers milling about outside the hangar so she wouldn't be overheard.

"I have a meeting I have to attend," he complained. "But I like your dress today."

A puzzled frown moved over her as she turned around.

And there he was, smirking ruthlessly as he strode down the hall, and leaning down as he passed, he rumbled, "You taste delicious,"

and with starry eyes

Bulma could only stare as Vegeta smirked at her over his shoulder

and clutch her hands in front of her with joy.

* * *

They'd gone on a mission.

The team had finally gone on a mission, and he hadn't been allowed to go.

For his transgressions, he'd been benched.

The animal roiled inside him, prowling around the edges of its cage.

The night was full of risk.

...

Bulma's hand on the washcloth stilled on the soapy dish as she realized it'd been months since she'd spoken to Yamcha.

She stared at the wall, the plate dripping in her hand.

Not since she'd made a fool of herself at his doorstep, and before then? She struggled to remember the last time they'd gone out together for no other reason than to enjoy each other.

Her eyes focused inwardly.

She remembered a slice of pie.

The flicker of candlelight. Facing an empty chair. Catching sight of movement at the back of the room by the ballroom, where Yamcha was speaking with one of his female coworkers.

Yamcha smiling down at her, handsome in a navy blue suit, moving the woman's hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear with long fingers.

The blood rushing from Bulma's face, and focusing instead on her pie, on staring at and committing to memory every nuance of the color and texture of the pie.

There was only her, and the pie.

Bulma grimaced, scrubbing with renewed vigor.

It was stupid, rehashing all this stuff and feeling bad about it when it was already done and gone.

She frowned, placing the rinsed dish into the dish drain. She'd just been so lonely with Yamcha, at least until…

 _ _Do you ever feel trapped? Like you're alone, even when you're surrounded by people?__

But not since...

Her clunky old telephone began to ring.

Bulma grabbed at it with soapy fingers. "Hello?"

"Hello, dear!"

Bulma gasped. _"_ _ _Mom!"__

"Oh, honey, it's been so long! I'm sorry! Your father and I have just been so busy, and long distance service onboard ship costs an arm and a leg—"

Bulma smiled contentedly. "Mom," she chided her, with affection. "It's okay. You guys are alright, though?"

"Why, of course, dear! Everything is peachy. Did you get our postcards?"

"Quite a few of them, actually." Bulma's eyes flicked with humor to the side of her fridge, where all the postcards had been hung. " The hanging gardens of Magellan? The shrines of Andromeda? The temples of Perseus and the colossus of Neptune? Mom, it's amazing! Intergalactic postal time isn't too shabby, either," she finished wryly.

"Oh, well you know your father, he's always wanted to see the galaxy!"

"So everything's fine then?"

"Why, sure! Everything is hunky dory in our star camper! How about you? How are things with Yamcha?"

Bulma's face fell.

"Bulma? Honey?"

"Oh. Yeah, about that…"

Her mother gasped. "It's true, then? Yamcha's seeing some new floozy?"

Bulma choked. "Who'd you hear that from?"

"Betty. She told me all about it because she still plays cards with Yamcha's mother on Tuesdays, and she said he'd been seeing new women left and right!"

Bulma's stomach turned. "Well, she's not wrong." Her voice grew thick with resentment, which she stamped out. "Yamcha and I haven't seen each other in months." It wasn't that she cared. It was just hard, hard being rejected.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetheart. Well, who needs him anyway? Have you been seeing anyone new?"

Bulma's mind went immediately to Vegeta, and she smiled dreamily. "Nahhhh, I'm not really dating right now, Mom," she hedged. Her fingers wound through the phone cord, staring out the window moonily. "Not really __'dating',__ anyway..."

"How's the factory work? Are you able to make ends meet?"

Bulma's mouth slanted. "Are you asking me about money? No way, I'm not talking to you about that! Don't worry about me."

"Well, just know, it won't be like this forever. I can't say much right now because none of it is official, but your dad assures me things will start looking up soon! Capsule Corp may be making a comeback!"

"What?" Bulma exclaimed. "Mom, what does that—"

"Oh, no, honey, the operator is dinging at me. My time is expiring. I have to go! I'll talk to you soon! Byeeeeee!"

The line clicked, and Bulma stared at her receiver in confusion.

…

Bulma began clearing everything out of her apartment that reminded her of Yamcha.

All of the gifts, all of the pictures, the teddy bear, the hair clip— they all went into the trash.

When she ripped open the drawer to her nightstand, her pink walky lay on top of the mess.

She picked it out from her drawer with care, and stared at it for a long moment, before lying down on the bed on her side. Her eyes burned, but she refused to let any tears fall.

The dial clicked as it turned on.

Her thumb hesitated over the call out button.

Bulma turned it off decisively and cradled it against her chest, turning the other direction, staring thoughtfully at the wall for a long while.

After awhile, a scouter 'cross the city began to ping, rang from a private line.

…

 _ _Tonight?__

 _ _My place or yours?__

 _ _Mine.__

"Wait, wait wait wait."

She wiggled and yanked the blanket from under her ass.

Vegeta's broad shoulders were tense above her.

"Shit, ow, my hair."

Vegeta moved his fist from beside her head and they re-situated.

With their breaths caught in their throats, they stared at each other.

Vegeta asked, "Are you ready?"

Bulma's face tightened. She nodded sharply, once. "Do it."

With what could only be described as a grimace, hand around the base of his cock, Vegeta pressed himself at her entrance.

He watched her face carefully as she inhaled softly at the pressure of his intrusion. He felt her hands glide supportively up his back, her knees lazing open at his sides, her body relaxing, indicating trust, even as her brows knit slightly as he slowly, slowly pushed himself deeper in.

This had been a terrible idea.

One of her hands squeezed the back of his neck, and she pressed his forehead against hers, reminding him that they were in this together. They watched each other until he'd sank all the way in.

He pulled out incrementally, and pushed gently again.

And this time, her breath caught with pleasure.

Vegeta's chest tightened with feeling at the sound.

Vegeta started to set a rhythm.

It wasn't a music which he was familiar with. It had been a __long__ dry spell, and the beat of his hand on his member was only a shallow reward, one that kept him stable(r) but wasn't particularly companionable and that he didn't think about a second after he was done.

But he would have never pressured her for this.

Instead, he knew when she'd opened the door and smiled at him, pale and nervous, what she wanted.

He'd tugged his gloves off and tossed them onto her makeup stand. She'd helped him take off his breastplate; she'd sat on the bed to slip off her heels. Her dress had slid from her hips and she'd pulled him on top of her onto her bed, throwing the comforter around them, draped over their heads, creating a world only they were apart of. He was careful to keep his weight off her. And then they stared at one another in the silence.

Vegeta wasn't dumb. Selfish and impulsive, sometimes/most of the time, but not dumb. He didn't just shoot lasers from his palms and blow rocks up; he was also, by trade, a strategist. And he'd quickly come to understand why she'd done this, watching a vulnerability he'd never seen her exhibit before slide across her features.

She needed him this way tonight.

And now she purred beneath him as he moved inside her, the radio chattered lightly from the dresser, her silky legs wrapped around his waist with approval, and he realized __he'd__ needed this tonight, too. Vegeta's body relaxed into hers. His body began to take the reins from his mind, today's concerns about being left behind melting away, and they were rocking with each other, his thumb smoothing over her temple and the weight of her cheek in his palm, her fingers skimming down his back and dragging down his shoulders as her eyes closed in pleasure.

And as her hips met his with new enthusiasm, she surprised him.

Her hands cupped his face, blue eyes peeking out from under heavy lashes.

And smiling, she pressed her lips against his.

Vegeta, totally unfamiliar with the act, let her move her mouth against him as he stilled inside her.

She leaned back to look at him with her own heavy lidded contentment.

And then he opened his own mouth and slanted it against hers to return the gesture, deeper, lips dragging against the other's as Vegeta kissed Bulma for the first time.

…

 _ _My place or yours?__

Bulma's eyes fixed tiredly on the window at the end of the hallway, work boots thumping as she dragged down the hall. She pressed the cell phone against her ear with her shoulder, juggling an arm full of blueprints.

"Yes, sir, I can have them there by five. No, sir, I—"

A hand shot out from a doorway and pulled Bulma inside. As the doorway settled into her back, a finger was pressed to her lips. She met Vegeta's dark eyes.

She blinked at him.

Gloved fingertips on her chin, he tilted her head up and kissed her, opening his mouth, hand sliding down her neck. Her mouth moved against his, smooth and cadenced.

And then he said, a low hum, "My place," dark eyes boring into hers, and left her there, sliding down the wall with rounded eyes, a grin stretching her face as she watched him stride down the hallway, cape snapping behind him.

"Ms. Briefs?" The voice from her cell phone was tiny and far away. "Ms. Briefs, are you still there?"

 _ _My place or yours?__

Bulma's purse fell to her kitchen floor as she was muscled backward into her living room, reaching for the lamp and knocking it over instead, her cat fleeing as his boots rang against the wood floor on their way to the couch. She clutched his breastplate for balance, as if she'd ever find balance around the man.

The radio on her makeup stand jittered as his hand smoothed over her ass and clutched it, pulling her closer against him in the darkness.

 _ _My place or yours?__

The rooftop training yard, the sky wide open with its belly threatening a spill of rain, and she was grinding against him on a bench with the warm spring breeze wafting over their skin, his face against her chest and her hand clutched in his hair as the night carried her cries out to sea.

 _ _My apt or yours?__

 _ _Mine.__

He braced against the wall of his kitchen, his hand wrapped under her knee, making her draw little breaths every time his hips hit hers. And she was melting against his lips, clutching his shoulders, when the oven timer dinged, alerting them that dinner was ready, but instead Vegeta smashed the timer into shards and continued his relentless surge inside of her until the kitchen smelled like soot.

 _ _My place or yours?__

 _ _Yours.__

"Bulma," he warned tensely.

She fell to her knees in his office and unzipped his pants with a grin. "No one's here," she reminded him, her breath hitting his hardening flesh.

She wasn't wrong. It seemed the whole Saiyan complex had been deployed to one place or another, leaving Vegeta floating, to think over his sins. It was to be the worst kind of torture for Vegeta, to endure the shame, to be deprived of destruction, to be stripped of his title and his role and left with only a desk that he'd rather smash to smithereens.

And when he sprang, hard and thick from his pants, her breath caught, and she met his gaze as her hot tongue glided all the way down to the base of him.

And when her mouth encompassed him totally, and he sucked air through his teeth as he hit the back of her throat, Vegeta didn't give a shit about anyone.

Only himself.

And her.

 _ _Yours or mine?__

 _ _Mine.__

The only passengers on the late night train, she straddled him, his fingers under her panties, his mouth against her neck, skin damp with sweat, and she rocked against his hand in the train car, her bare shoulders under his lips, and they laughed, relishing the bad bad badness of it all.

 _ _Yours?__

The front door slammed shut as Bulma shoved Vegeta against the wall, her mouth rasping against his, dragging her tongue down his neck and biting him. She tugged her lab coat off. "Fuck me," she demanded, wrenching his pants open.

"Bad day?"

"Awful."

He sat her on his empty kitchen table, his teeth clenched with need, and drove into her even as he tugged his shirt over his head, until the table had scooted across the room against the wall where it could go no further and Vegeta was bracing himself against the wall, driving into her as she cried out loud enough for his neighbors to hear.

 _ _Mine.__

The fact that other unwitting engineers were just outside the door on their lunch break only made him bury his face in her deeper, messy and wide until her palm slammed against the windshield behind her, almost there, almost, in the eerie glow of the starship's cabin lights, because Vegeta most liked tempting fate—

 _ _Yours.__

 _ _Mine.__

—and when she said "Devour me," into his mouth, "don't ever stop," he flipped her over and buried himself fully into her from behind, his heavy, hot flesh finding her as soon as his fingers could rip his pant's button from its hole, and he had to put his hand over her mouth just to muffle her cries and nestle his mouth at the back of her neck to stifle his own—

 _ _Yours?__

 _ _Mine.__

 _ _Mine.__

 _ _Mine.__

…

She was folding chocolate chips into cookie dough.

Vegeta leaned back, elbows against the kitchen counter, as Bulma explained the way she was enhancing the thrust on the model star ship, licking errant dough from her finger before continuing.

Vegeta's gaze ticked over the pictures all over her refrigerator. Some of them were of a chubby-cheeked baby, which she had explained was one of her friend's half-Saiyan kid. Kakarot's, Vegeta assumed, with irritation. Some were of her parents, an older man and a blonde with a cheeky smile. There were so many pictures that many of them were pinned on top of others, and only because of a flash of neon orange did one that had fallen, wedged under the fridge, catch his eye. It was a bright orange unhappy face sticker. The photo was dusty and grimy from its prison beneath the fridge and he wiped it off. The sticker was slapped over the head of the body of a man who had his arm around Bulma's waist. In the photo, Bulma's arm was looped around man's waist, kissing him dramatically on the cheek. Her hair was longer, her face perhaps a little younger. Vegeta pulled closer, eyeing it, as Bulma dolloped cookie dough onto the baking sheet, her voice a cheery hum over the radio.

Vegeta kept staring at the arm wrapped around Bulma's waist.

He wanted to pick the sticker off.

The sound of the oven door opening and the rush of hot air caused him to pin it back on the fridge and turn.

…

It wasn't until he woke in the early morning, toweling his damp hot skin from the shower and rubbing the towel in his hair, that he noticed her bathroom trash was full of things.

A stuffed bear.

Jewelry.

Pictures.

Vegeta plucked one of them carefully from the trash can and looked at it.

Then he tore the couple in half and crushed the man in his hands.

Vegeta pulled on his suit and took the train to work.

…

Vegeta tore the meat from the bone and chewed.

"I've always wanted to be spanked," Bulma confided.

"Why do you always insist on making my dick hard in public?"

She bumped his hip with her own, and he grimaced with annoyance. "What, are you saying you don't enjoy public displays?" She snorted, delicately sipping her iced tea through its straw. "Because we both know that isn't true."

He muttered something impassable that she didn't bother asking him to repeat because she knew he didn't mean it.

"Are you saying it's not something you'd want to try?" Bulma grabbed his wrist and bit a chunk off his chicken leg and chewed, watching him thoughtfully as he gave her a sour look for stealing his food. "You haven't ever been turned on by a woman being spanked for her sexual pleasure?"

Vegeta scowled. "Do you always have to talk like this when people are around?"

"Yes."

"I think you get off on this."

"A little," she admitted. "Mostly I like to watch you squirm."

Vegeta's eyes widened as he absorbed, and then appreciated, the depth of cruelty required for that. And then narrowed as a plot winged through his mind. "About this spanking…."

Her eyes grew wide with eagerness. "Yes?"

"Didn't you mention that you had…toys, once?"

"I have a quaint collection." She popped some of the ice from inside her cup into her mouth, watching an advertisement on a row of tv's inside a store. "If you'd like to peruse it."

"Oh, good." The smirk curling his face became even more dastardly, eyeteeth glinting in the streetlight. "Because I can't wait to tie you up and put a cork in that porky mouth of yours when we get back home."

"Will the cork be your dick?"

Vegeta's face fell, and he glared at her.

Bulma just threw her head back and laughed.

Vegeta began walking faster in front of her, shoulders scrunched with annoyance around his ears. "You're impossible."

"You're just mad because you can't win with me, Vegeta. I'm just saying," Bulma called, stepping out into the intersection as he beelined across. "There is so much we haven't explored yet—"

Suddenly, the beams of a car's headlights flared in her vision.

Bulma's head swung to the side, gaping with surprise as she watched the hover car hurdling toward her.

The cars headlights enveloped and blinded her, her feet rooted to the spot with disbelief.

When Vegeta stepped between her and the light, cooly flattening the palm of his hand in front of him, stopping the car completely in its tracks with a screech of metal.

Her arms had wrapped around his waist instinctively, and Bulma peeked out from behind his back. The car no longer posed a threat, as the front end had been folded in several times like an accordion, and the engine was no longer operating...or the same shape or size.

"I shouldn't have walked off without you," he said, Vegeta's face painted in the glare and shadows of the headlights as he looked down at her with anxiety. "You idiot, you're always getting under my skin because you think it's funny, and it's going to get you hurt!"

Her mouth moved as she looked up at him in the beam of bright light, but nothing came out.

"Fucking Saiyan!" The driver was saying, mustache and eyebrows working petulantly. "Look at what you did to my car!"

Vegeta only looked annoyed and began walking off.

Bulma gaped at the man. "That Saiyan just saved my life, you idiot!" Bulma shrieked back.

"You! C'mere, you!" The driver tried to get out of the car, but the driver's side door would only creak halfway open and he was stuck.

"Don't you know what a red light looks like!" Bulma's fists clenched, and she took a step toward the man, before an arm swooped round her waist and dragged her backwards until she was safely on the sidewalk.

"I'll have your head, you bimbo!"

"Try me!"

Busy hassling the driver from the edge of the sidewalk, Bulma startled when a car careened past her, and let out a shriek, darting back to Vegeta and clinging anxiously to his solid arm.

He glanced sidelong at her. "Is violence and near-death all it takes to shut you up?"

Bulma's mouth moved, but she was still too freaked out to form words.

A smirk played at the corner of his mouth. "I've been going about this all wrong."

She sniffed with distaste, but didn't unwind herself from him yet.

"Hey! Hey, buddy!" A man selling chicken on the street corner called. Vegeta looked up indifferently. "Free food for that display, my treat."

Vegeta's point of trajectory changed, and before she knew it, they were under the tent, hands full of moist and dripping drumsticks, like meaty bouquets. "Great, more meat," Bulma muttered.

"Saiyans aren't all bad," the vendor told her with a grin as Vegeta walked away, ripping into his second drumstick. "I think they're fun as hell!" He winked as Bulma thanked him, hurrying to catch up with her Saiyan.

Bulma and Vegeta tore into the chicken as they walked down the sidewalk, nearing Vegeta's apartment. And though she knew Vegeta didn't like public displays, she sucked her fingers clean and then looped her arm in his again and squeezed appreciatively. He only glanced sidelong at her.

They threw the bones into a trashcan outside another pop-up tent, wiping their hands on cheap napkins, and walked, quiet and contained, the rest of the way to his place.

But as they reached the steps of his apartment building, Bulma pulled him close, and kissed him.

Slowly. Deeply. Wringing.

Vegeta's hands snaked up the backs of her thighs under her skirt, and he muscled her against the door of his apartment building. Bulma wrapped her legs around his hips and laughed.

"You taste like chicken."

" _ _You__ taste like chicken." The backsides of his fingers shimmied under her panties and brushed her core.

"You're so bad," she said.

"You want a bad man." A predator grinned down at her.

"Be my bad man," she crooned, arms wrapped around his neck. "Do bad things to me. Spank me, Vegeta!"

Then he opened the door and they spilled in, a woman's loose and bawdy laughter echoing through the night.

Raditz, Toma, Fasha and Nappa watched with mouths hanging open.

"Oh, that is just sad," Toma finally said, glancing uncertainly at his friends. "Vegeta has to pay for sex now?"

Fasha hit him in the back of the head.

"That's that engineer," Raditz pointed.

Toma looked at Raditz. Then nodded, more and more enthusiastically as something totally new—like a thought—began to form in his brain. "That same one he was arguing with in his office that day. The same one we caught staring at him in the training yard."

"She's the one who all the third-class fangirl over," Nappa grumbled.

"But…why?"

All four Saiyans stared at the door the pair had just disappeared through.

"Is he blackmailing her for sex?" Toma glanced at them with concern.

Raditz gasped. "Is she blackmailing __him?"__

Nappa stroked his mustache. "Vegeta is the type to go total scorched earth strategy, if he's desperate enough."

"What?" Raditz hacked with laughter, glancing at them as if they were all in on the joke. "You think he was just painfully horny?"

"This isn't serious, is it?" Toma paled. "He wouldn't…he wouldn't put a woman above his duty to us, right?"

After a wide-eyed pause, all three men burst into laughter.

Fasha snorted snidely and turned on her heel. Her voice was low and husky in the night as her boots tread concrete. "Whose gonna be the one to tell him he's deploying this week?"

Toma's face scrunched with bewilderment. "Why does it matter?"

Nappa looked back at the door dourly.

"What's with all the Saiyan men I know settling down with Earthlings?" Raditz stroked his chin and began ambling in the direction Fasha had taken off, and Toma settled in beside him. "Maybe they're really spectacular between the sheets?"

Toma pouted. "Now I want a human!"

"Well, if one threw down her chips for Vegeta, one would most __definitely__ settle for us," Raditz declared.

The men watched Fasha's retreating back as she impatiently strode further and further away.

"I didn't think Vegeta…dated." Toma glanced at Raditz uncertainly.

Raditz let out a whip of laughter. "He's not dating her, buddy." Raditz pounded Toma on the back. "He's __shagging__ her. When has Vegeta ever been interested in that dog and pony show?"

"Well, sure, but for awhile he was seeing—"

"She was the desperate one, begging for scraps of his attention." Raditz flipped his hair over his shoulder, ducking under the low-hanging branches of a maple tree. "Vegeta never even looked at her until she moved on and his pride was wounded."

"Vegeta's pride can't get hurt by a woman, because the only thing Vegeta takes pride in is himself," Nappa's voice tolled from behind them. "Vegeta knows what's most important. He doesn't get distracted by such trivial matters. His life ends and begins with the success of this unit—"

"—Himself," Raditz muttered over Nappa's blustering.

"—and always has. Nothing will ever be as sweet to Vegeta as redecorating stubborn planets." Nappa guffawed at this, the whites of his eyes shiny with conviction. "I mean, even if the pussy's good, give Vegeta an opportunity to smash or maim or sabotage something, and that woman will be left crying into her hanky in a heartbeat. Besides." Nappa's voice dipped. "She ain't Saiyan. And a warrior Elite is all Vegeta'd ever bother with, or deserves."

"Still." Toma glanced uncertainly at the two other Saiyans. "It's kind of romantic, don't you think?"

Raditz groaned and cuffed Toma across the head.

"I still think it's romantic," Toma sniffled, rubbing the back of his head.


	7. Chapter 7

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 1.) I'm so sorry I still haven't thought of a more creative name than "Accidental Intimacy." It was literally the working title for my rough draft. 2.) How I wish writing worked for all of us: 1. Thinks of fan fiction idea 2. "Everyone would love this fan fiction idea" 3. ? ? ? 4. Profit

* * *

With the same callous swiftness that the Saiyan Special Forces squad departed Earth and left Vegeta behind, his elite team of special ops soldiers were back to disrupt his life again, and with news. Vegeta had been given notice when they disembarked, if Vegeta had been paying attention to his scouter—which he had not. Instead, he was trapped beneath a blue-haired Earthling who was becoming an inseparable part of his life without his realizing it.

In the stillness of very early morning, Vegeta woke to dead weight crushing his chest, one smooth leg thrown over his hip and a forearm pressing into his cheek. The radio on Bulma's makeup stand glinted moonlight, the room thick with shadows. He rolled onto his back, his hand sleepily dragging across her hip as he pulled himself with maximum effort out of bed and out from the tangle of legs and sheets. It had been like this lately, falling into bed instead of catching the train. Perhaps because there were less Saiyans around to catch him in the act of being soft. Or because he just __liked__ to. Dreamless sleep, heavy sleep, sleep that made the restless stuff he'd gotten since Earth look like a wide-eyed afternoon. It was the pinnacle of the privilege and hedonism he'd always __so__ wanted to enjoy but had always been just out of reach.

Vegeta had always been climbing up, crawling out, wanting more, demanding it all. He wasn't interested in just being a good soldier. He wanted to be the best soldier, he wanted to be a fucking __legend__. And how was he to do that __here__?

His shower was scalding and quick, and he dressed quickly, pulling on his boots and the gloves that lay atop her desk.

Vegeta found himself standing over her.

Her hand rested beside her head on the pillow, serene face shrouded by hair. Her bare shoulder moved with each deep breath, unstirred.

With two gloved fingers, he traced the lines of her palm, marveling.

Then he closed the front door quietly, taking the train to the Saiyan military headquarters with his back straight in an empty car.

Drawing up to the military complex, his gait was relaxed, hands in his pockets, the fresh breath of the morning breeze a caress against his skin. The sun was just breaking the horizon, and his boots kicked up the lace of fog spilling over concrete.

But as he turned the final corner up the long, hedged walkway, he nearly missed a step.

His squad loitered outside the front doors, smoking, and giving Vegeta each a unique look.

Vegeta startled. Narrowing his eyes, he set a ground-eating pace towards them. "You're back," he only said. With their eyes on him, he straightened, his stride powerful and proud. If they were looking at him because they pitied him and his exclusion from the mission, he refused to accept it.

"Sir," they only said, but watched him as he led them inside, wondering at the back of the familiar and yet transformed man before them.

…

In the sleepy lull of the afternoon, hunched over the final draft of blueprints to submit at the close of the big Saiyan project—rapidly approaching, totally panic-inducing—Bulma's phone buzzed loudly against the table. She didn't have time to talk. So. Much. Work. She was drowning in it. Bulma was manically drafting a star ship design for the Saiyan fleet, and its craftsmanship was Ambitious with a capital A. It was way too much fucking work for one individual, actually, too much work for the pay, but Bulma plodded forward, determined to show up everyone who'd ever doubted her. She mashed her lips together, squinting, pencil strokes gliding over paper. She was one of hundreds of the universe's citizens who had been picked to represent their companies, and who, in the breadth of the star ship hangar, was putting it all on the line to make their name known. She had just happened to take a risk, make a play, and she certainly wasn't going to give up now. In this hangar right now, no one cared what her name was, where she came from. They didn't care she was the daughter of the entrepreneur that had broken down the wall between Earth and the rest of the universe. No one would believe her anyway. And so she was nobody, penning notes in the margins and manically swiping eraser dust with the side of her palm.

She had so many people whose faces she wanted to laugh in.

Remembering the vibration absently, her glass-eyed gaze moved to her phone screen, only to jump at the sender's name above the text.

Yamcha.

Panicked, she flipped the phone face down with a bang and recoiled away from the desk.

She stared at the phone's back, waiting for it to grow claws and jump out at her.

Cringing but curious, she turned the phone face up.

 _ _Can we meet for lunch?__

"The nerve." Her face fell flat. "Magic eight ball says __outlook grim,__ " she muttered, batting her phone away.

…

Clutching the source of his profound joy in his thick grip, Vegeta stared at the sheet of paper in awe.

"I can't explain how you went from frothy and insubordinate to us hearing nary a peep from you these past weeks, but this is your payment." His Commander was glowering at his least-favorite upstart from behind his desk. "Command thinks you are fit, refocused, and ready for office again. You are to report tomorrow at daybreak. Your team has recently arrived back from their mission, and you are reassigned to them as we speak."

Vegeta was riding a high so epic he was barely listening.

"Be assured," hammered his Commander, "that the success of this mission will illustrate whether or not you're fit to lead a unit or continue future deployments. How you got this far in the military skirting direct orders is beyond me." He watched Vegeta irritably.

Vegeta didn't care what the Commander thought. Vegeta was one of their best assets in the field, and everyone knew it. He was powerful, and that was the name of the game for advancement in the Saiyan military, because Saiyans _were_ the weapons.

Vegeta was also a smart Saiyan, not just a reactive one. He was a master of assessing and strategizing, holding back or unleashing hell flexibly as the situation escalated. And he was scary when he got mad.

It all, unfortunately, just depended on how he felt the situation damaged or improved his pride.

Vegeta's eyes didn't leave the papers.

He'd been let out of time out, to do what a Saiyan did best.

Destroy someone.

Vegeta bared his teeth at his Commander in what might have been a smile.

…

The truth was, Vegeta wasn't refocused, as his boss had suggested. In fact, his focus had been completely elsewhere.

All day long he'd gloated, swaggering around in the training room with a sly and villainous grin and managing only to annoy and nauseate his fellow Saiyans. He had his team back. His title back. His privileges back. A search-and-destroy operation waiting for his violent embrace. He was a Saiyan with everything a Saiyan could have wanted, beyond a good fight.

But something discomfiting was settling over him as the day passed, stealing all the sweetness from his victory.

In only her panties and an old shirt draping off one shoulder, the woman he'd been spending his time with sprawled on the couch, one leg over Vegeta's lap as she used her screwdriver to put back together Vegeta's scouter, which had recently been on the fritz. Vegeta's gloves and breastplate were thrown onto the chair, a few pizza boxes emptied on the kitchen table.

Vegeta's cheek rested on his knuckles as he stared at the tv, staring right through it as something niggled him. He looked out of the corner of his eye at Bulma.

Guiltily.

Bulma, being a human being, had emotions. Lots of them. How might she react to his leaving? Would she dissolve into hysterics? Would she cry? Would she beg, give him an ultimatum? Ask him to leave? Plead with him to stay?

Vegeta huffed, looking the other way. __Emotions__ , he thought scornfully. Why had emotions survived the adaptation process? Saiyans thrived on instinct alone. They could be lobotomized and still win a fight, because evolution had prioritized their __fight__ in flight or fight, not their __feelings__. They didn't need anything but their basest gut impulses, so long as their hearts were still pumping Saiyan blood through their magnificent Saiyan bodies. __That__ was the epitome of survival of the fittest, not all of these complicated emotional hurdles women invented and men had to circumvent.…

His eyes slid anxiously to their corners, regarding the woman, humming in pink panties and thick safety goggles.

He held out his hand.

It was a demand.

Bulma looked at it, then glanced up at him. She slid her hand into his, threading their fingers together and squeezing.

With what he felt was the utmost stealth and subtlety, the General of the Saiyan Special Forces only said:

"Can you build a walky whose range transcends thousands of leagues in space?"

Bulma blinked up from the scouter through rakish bangs. Then she smiled, her cheeks crinkling her eyes. "Who do you think I am?" She politely took back her hand to finish his scouter. "Of course I can."

His voice was strained as he sought to break the news to this tender, fragile human. "Can you have one ready by tonight?"

Bulma stopped, but she didn't look up.

Her voice was carefully neutral. "How long will you be gone?"

His voice was low. "Hard to say. A week. A month."

After a pause, she turned the screwdriver with nimble fingers. "I'm Bulma Briefs," she reminded him saucily. "If anyone can do it, I can." And then she smirked up at him, reassuring him, one blue eye showing through the curtain of her hair.

His chest tightened, jaw locked. "Service isn't bad through this quadrant, but where we're going…." Vegeta looked anywhere but her. "I won't be able to talk," he finished rudely. Uncomfortably.

Bulma's voice was playful. "If I send nudes, will it be days later before you get them?"

His gaze shot to her, then away. "Probably." He leaned back, his hands threading at the back of his head. Glanced her way again. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't send them."

Bulma just handed him the scouter flippantly. "Don't break it next time."

He turned it on, ran through the prompts on the screen. He leaned back into the couch, t-shirt stretching across his broad chest. "It wouldn't have broken if you didn't text me all the time on it."

Bulma only glanced over him with approval. His was a body engineered for fighting, and when he turned that predatory attention on her, every hard inch of him was pressed against her, owning her.

She knew just what she wanted to do before he left her.

Throwing her leg over his lap, Bulma straddled him. His eyebrows shot up as she rested her hand on his shoulder for balance. "You like it when I bother you." She shoved her safety glasses atop her head, and plucked the scouter from his ear, tossing it onto the end table.

Leisurely, he slid his ungloved palms over her calves. His hands curved up the back of her thighs, and he admired the view of her breasts in his face. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth, like a smile might grow there. His fingertips brushed the crotch of her panties. A breath escaped her lips and did not go unnoticed.

There were things he'd grown to enjoy, things that, in their simplicity, dwarfed the phone calls and sexting: the comfort of her skin in his ungloved hands; her infectious smile and her exuberance against all odds; the deep contentment when they did nothing at all; the weight of her in his arms when they slept, a solidity that in the whole universe felt uniquely his and his alone.

Vegeta put his mouth to the column of her bare throat.

"Do you want me to pick up your dry cleaning while you're gone? I could water your plant."

His fingers snaked under her panties, brushing her flesh. He dragged his teeth against her collar bone. "Yes." Vegeta rested his forehead against her breast, the musk of her skin imprinting itself inside him.

"Don't break your scouter while you're out there. I can't fix it all the way over here on Earth."

"Fine."

"Don't break your neck, either."

In one swift movement, Vegeta shifted his weight onto his knees and dumped her on the couch, lifting her hips and running his tongue down the curve of her ass, peeling the panties from her hips with his fingertips.

"Don't underestimate me." Her underwear stretched around her knees as Vegeta drew his tongue up between her lips with cruel slowness.

Bulma, forehead pressing into the couch, felt his breath feather against her thighs. Her breath hitched.

"Even if I'm off planet," he warned, "I still expect you to message me."

I expect you to remain available for casual phone encounters, was the subtext.

Her lips crooked against the fabric of the sofa with a private smile. "I'll text you, Vegeta, don't worry."

His voice ran hot, intoxicating. "I want you to think about me all the time, too." His hot mouth dragged up her thigh. She could feel his sharp teeth catch against the round curve of her ass.

A laugh caught in her throat. "You mean dirty, naughty thoughts? Or how much of a pain in the ass you are?"

Vegeta's hot mouth sucked the flesh between her thighs, causing Bulma's hips to shoot up and a hiss to escape her teeth.

"Dirty things. Naughty things. All the things." And felt his thumb slide lightly up the center of her. "No other men," he warned her, and he buried his face into her from behind.

"Kami, Vegeta," she replied hoarsely. What was with him tonight?

One arm stretching above her head, her hand grasped in her hair as he claimed her with his mouth.

Let's agree to keep fucking when I get back, was what that implied.

Vegeta flipped her without warning, roughly pulling her panties off and parting her legs, watching her with half-lidded, black eyes.

She struggled to catch her breath. "Jeez, you wanna give me a concussion?"

He drew his t-shirt up the ridges of his abs and over the wide plane of his chest, tossing it with careless sensuality on the floor, and then pushed his pants down past the thick v of his abdomen, the waist bunching at his hips.

Bulma flushed. "Oh, my," she murmured, like he were a national treasure.

His hand gripped her thigh possessively, pressing it against his muscled hip. His heavy erection lay against the soft, moist heat of her. "Just me," he said.

A flash of anxiety passed over his face before hardening with resolve.

Bulma didn't have to think. The answer was instinctual.

"Just you, Vegeta," she finally assured him, voice soft and earnest. Her hand curled tenderly against his cheek as he looked down on her.

All this subtext about this just being a casual thing, all that had been implied about the heat between them as if they could just turn it off and on whenever they felt like it like it didn't burn and burn at them even if they were apart: at what point had everything they said to one another become a lie they shared in subverting together?

The muscles of his thighs bunching beneath her, Vegeta leaned down, slanted his mouth against hers, and kissed her hungrily. She made a sound of approval deep in her throat. Her eyes opened to take him in, to commit to memory every sight and smell and breath and every press of skin and bite of pleasure. His own, a black mirror, watched as he filled with a single thrust.

Afterwards, she dozed, her cheek smushed against his chest as they lay in her bed, her blue hair feathering against his skin. And he'd looked out the wall of windows, at the gridiron of lights from the towering buildings staring emptily back at him, at the inky darkness behind their tall and ominous silhouettes, the sky washed out of stars. And he felt a pain, an emotional ache that he didn't examine because he was drifting to sleep.

…

Bulma was fine.

Vegeta wasn't much for public displays or goodbyes, and that morning she could feel him pulling away as he prepared mentally for the mission ahead. So she slid a heaping plate of eggs and toast at him as he toweled off from the shower, and watched him suit up in the lamp light, toothbrush dangling from her lips and blow dryer drooping in her hand.

Slipping out the front door to head to the train station, Bulma spotted a notice of late rent hanging on her doorknob. She yanked it off and crushed it behind her back. Bulma had her pride, too.

It was quite early, but the station was already busy and the train had no mercy, arriving just a minute after they did. Vegeta only nodded his goodbye, giving her a quick glance of acknowledgment, and stepped through the train doors. If Vegeta had looked behind him, he'd have seen the door draw close on Bulma's cheerful face, waving. But he did not.

She was fine.

Days Without Vegeta and counting. The military building seemed less exciting without the chance of running into him, the hours dragging on. Without Vegeta, Bulma went home alone each night. Talked to her cat. Went to bed early. She used to do this every night, when she was single, but it felt like it had been a lifetime ago. The apartment was still and quiet, as was her phone. She felt like a stranger in her own apartment, like she was suffering from a days long hangover, like she was without an essential component of her self she'd come to rely on. She made enough dinner for two, and then had a bunch of leftovers to put away. Her sheets smelled like him, like them. She buried herself in her work.

Bulma kept morale up by sending him lascivious pictures of her private parts.

 _ _I'm pushing my panties down over my wet thighs,__ one message teased, with a picture of her thumbs hooked in her low-cut panties. __Now I just need to be bent over your desk.__

There was no response.

Without Vegeta, Bulma found herself surlier than usual, and the texts she kept getting from Yamcha were even more exasperating than they would have been otherwise.

"Just block him," ChiChi said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"He just keeps asking if we can meet up," Bulma complained. "I am not getting back with him." She rested her forehead heavily between her thumb and forefinger. "It's tough being so beautiful."

But ChiChi had been absolutely no help when Bulma'd needed to commiserate over Vegeta's deployment. ChiChi had rolled her eyes and just said, "Tough luck. Goku's gone, too. Glory-seeking assholes."

Bulma sighed noisily and sunk her head further into her palm. "It's lonely without him." She stared at the floor through her fingers. "I didn't think it'd bother me so much." She'd thought she was stronger than this. But it __did__ bother her. Because it had been a week—a __week__ —and she'd already fallen so low!

But Bulma was fine.

As Gohan banged together two toys on the rug before them, Bulma, sprawled out in a chair, found a photo of Vegeta on her phone and shoved it in ChiChi's direction.

"Isn't he dreamy?"

ChiChi blinked, trying to focus on the image smashed into her line of vision. "He looks kind of mad."

"What part of him is not to like," Bulma sighed contentedly, gazing over every bulging muscle.

"I like my Saiyans taller," ChiChi dismissed, gaze raking over the photo.

Bulma's brows shot into an angry frown. "He's perfectly tall enough. __And__ he's a General."

"As opposed to Goku, who's __not?"__

The two women stared intensely at the other.

"I didn't realize things had gotten so serious," ChiChi said suspiciously, effectively breaking the tension as she bent forward to hand baby Gohan a toy. "I thought you were just…you know…."

Bulma laughed. " _'Serious?'_ " Bulma stretched her back over the arm chair, flipping through her photos of Vegeta upside down, her smile moony. Her hotline lover, her conquering hero. "What do you mean?"

ChiChi snorted. "You like him." She stared at Bulma, willing the words to sink into the woman's thick skull. " _ _Like__ like him."

"Noooo," Bulma laughed, shooing the idea away. "We're…friends."

"You're more than just friends, Bulma Briefs." ChiChi was already running out of patience. "I'm not even sure you're dating." ChiChi leaned closer with anticipation. "In fact, I think it's gone farther than that."

Bulma was growing irritated. "What are you blabbering on about?" Everything was fine, she was fine, just fine.

"How often does he spend the night?"

"He doesn't spend the night __every__ night!"

"Does he ask you to hang as a spur of the moment, after 9 o'clock 'let's hook up' thing?" ChiChi was turning all her scary intensity on her. "Or is it written into your calendars well in advance?"

"It's just implied," Bulma grumped.

"Do you go dutch? No awkwardness, no uncertainty, wallets out for everybody."

"Wha—? What's that have to do with anything?"

"Does he see other women?"

Bulma suppressed a surge of possessiveness. "Of course not."

"And you're not seeing other men. Is he ever on his phone while you guys hang out, checking messages, taking calls? Or does he turn it off so he can give you his undivided attention?"

Bulma was yelling now. "He wouldn't take the calls anyway, he doesn't like being bothered!"

"Not unless it's by you. Because most of the time, you're the one he's checking messages and taking calls from. Two milkshakes, two straws, or one milkshake, one straw?"

"It's not a crime if we both like chocolate!" Bulma's voice was shrill. "Why do you have to label us? Why can't you see that this is just a, a man and a woman, who, sure, like getting it on and hanging out, just being next to each other, and when that person's gone we miss them a lot because they're wonderful not because we're dating, and there doesn't need to be any lines drawn in the sand when we know what's between us why can't you see that we're more than that and oh my god."

Bulma's world came to a stop.

"You've got it bad, girl," ChiChi murmured, pulling Gohan's pacifier out of his mouth with a sucking pop and replacing it with a bottle of milk.

Bulma stared at the wall, her eyes growing rounder and wider.

And then Bulma screamed.

…

Saturday night's alright, alright. Everyone in her city seemed to be out on the town, cutting through the night with their excited stories and laughter, loud and alive, caught up in their stupid lives like they couldn't see what kind of obvious cataclysm was going on inside Bulma presently. The scent of an approaching storm ribboned on the breeze, heat lightening scoring the distant clouds. The humidity was cranked up, and Bulma's shirt stuck to the small of her back.

"Ohmygod, ohmygod." Bulma looked around with paranoia, a grimace stretching her face as she sped through the Saturday night crowd on her way home. Her heart was still pounding a rhythm to rival the dance music oozing from a bar down the block, her gut doing little cartwheels as her sandals slapped the pavement. Bulma smacked her palm against her forehead. "Stupid, stupid!" She ran her hand again through her hair, her hair starting to stick up with the gesture. She was sporting a dramatically pained look that was causing passersby to stare at her with concern. "Of course! You idiot! How could you not have realized!"

Falling for him had not been part of the plan.

 _ _What plan?__ A part of herself cruelly interjected. __Fucking him over the phone hadn't been part of the plan, either. And you hadn't ended things there. Had fucking him in real life been part of the plan, Bulma?__

Bulma didn't really plan anything. She didn't have a determined, firm grip on all the variables of her life with one end goal in mind, she just lived each day to its fullest with a gamine grin. Perhaps, like her absent minded professor of a father or like most socialites who didn't need to work for a living—although there was that time a consultant tried to pitch to her her own line of _Bulma Briefs'_ perfume—she existed in the here and now. Life's troubles were restricted to whatever problem she was immediately face to face with. Electricity shut off tomorrow after weeks of notices? Finally scrape up the cash. Stomach rumbling? Better grab something to eat for dinner. A man calling on her with a voice that felt like velvet over gravel over her skin and who was not simply masculine or attractive, but set-your-teeth-on-edge carnal? Sign her up. Bulma hadn't exactly had a rigorous schedule to maintain or a destiny to fulfill to bother planning for. Even now, she wasn't very good at responsibility, because Yamcha was kind of supposed to just stick around forever, right? Her heart caught in her throat. So there was the ugly truth. Until recently, she'd just assumed she'd be with Yamcha forever, and he'd keep her grounded, but that daydream had gone right in the trash with all his gifts and the remnants of his existence, and then she'd been flirting with this guy over the phone and now all the sudden they were spending the night and picking up each other's dry cleaning and—

Bulma came to a halt, breathing shallowly.

"I'm falling for him," she gulped. She shook her head, hair whipping with the force of her denial. "This isn't good."

She needed to stop immediately! She didn't want to fall in love! She'd just gotten out of a relationship.

Because if she started having feelings for him, and he didn't want to return them, then Vegeta would leave her.

And if she fell for someone who didn't want her again, she didn't know that she could ever bounce back from it.

She felt suddenly, absolutely certain that the worst thing that could happen would be if she confessed these feelings to Vegeta and he rejected her. She'd never felt this free, this happy, this excited with a man before. It was terrifying. It was vulnerable. It was glorious. These feelings were too big, too powerful for her just to keep contained, all barred up in her chest. She couldn't keep the truth from Vegeta, not face-to-face with the man, whose dark eyes saw everything. And once he knew, all of the special moments they'd shared and that seemed promised for tomorrow would slip through her fingers. Her heart was too much of a wild card, she'd been handing it out to everyone like a business card. She had to practice control.

Bulma shut her bedroom door behind her by leaning her back against it, breathing hard.

She tossed her purse atop her kitchen table and was already pacing. She fingered the phone in her pocket.

He hadn't replied once to any of her messages since he'd left, even her most titillating ones. Wildly, with something in her throat, Bulma opened to their message thread and began typing.

 _ _Vegeta we need to talk call me.__

What was she, a fucking idiot? Why would she even mention it?! He couldn't know! He could never know!

She made a sound of pain in her throat.

 _ _I think we need to take a break.__

Her face was lit eerily from the light of her phone in the dark, her thumb hovering over the 'send' button.

 _ _I'm moving on,__ but she was really stumbling backwards. _ _I'll leave your dry cleaning on your table, and I watered your plant. Nice knowing you….__ Pain lanced through her at the thought.

The text was erased before she could blink.

 _ _I miss sleeping next to you,__ her fingers typed with a mission of their own, her mind a cacophony with no direction, before she'd erased that one self-consciously.

 _ _Hope you're having fun,__ she settled for instead, then erased the insipid thing with frustration.

 _ _Remember when you made me say "Just you?" But it really is just you. There's only room for you. And I want it to be just you, only you, forever you—__

She'd thrown her phone on the ground and keened pathetically.

Bulma was NOT fine.

…

On a particularly balmy Thursday, crossing one last busy intersection before finally drawing near her apartment building, Bulma kept her head down low as she pushed through the crowd.

And stopped short upon seeing Yamcha, who leaned against the side of a sleek black car, his eyes roaming over people on the street before, senses prickling, he turned in her direction.

Bulma's heart stumbled over itself.

Bulma was torn, yanked by so many different feelings: shock, self-consciousness, grief, curiosity.

What was __he__ doing here?!

Outrage bubbled up inside her. How __dare__ he infiltrate the protective bubble and this new life she'd worked so hard to erect once he was gone?

Her shoulders hunched and her face turning stormy, Bulma's stride quickened. "What do you want, Yamcha?"

He blinked. "Hi, Bulma—" He stopped, watching her breeze past him. "I don't think you're happy to see me."

"Why would I be?" She snipped, filching her keys from her pocket.

"Bulma," he sighed, "we need to talk. If you'll just come with me, we can talk over dinner—"

"HA!" Bulma was already striding through the front doors of her apartment building.

Yamcha gaped, and then he scurried after her, throwing the front door open as it closed behind her and tailing her.

"Bulma," came his familiar tenor, "this is important!"

Her slim, manicured hand pressed the elevator button, and she ignored him.

"Bulma," Yamcha sighed, running his hand through his hair and settling the other in his coat pocket.

"Don't __Bulma__ me," she snapped, glaring at him from the side. "I am a grown ass woman, treat me like one. I've had enough of your attitude to last a lifetime, and I won't take it anymore," she muttered.

Yamcha's eyes widened. She'd wasted no time with the fighting words. He blew out air angrily, patience already unraveling. _"_ _ _You?__ What about __me?"__

The elevator dinged, and the doors drew open like a curtain. He followed her on her heels.

She planted herself at the back of the elevator, cooly leaning her back against the wall, folding her arms across her chest and fixing her eyes on the ceiling.

Determined to prove her wrong, Yamcha continued, his voice rising. "I spent years weathering your mood swings—"

Bulma wasn't very good at hearing the other party's grievances and playing fair, as she had very little emotional self-control, which she made up for with combativeness. Her eyes flashed anger, and she leaned forward, pointing. "Oh, so it was all __my__ fault?"

"And this! __This!"__ He waved his hand around. She huffed, assumed he was mad because she was standing up for herself. "You can't even have a conversation with me without drawing a line in the ground. Everything between us is always so black and white with you!"

"What else are you trying to say, then?" Their voices rang in the small space. "Because it sounds a lot like you're blaming me for everything that went wrong!"

"Unbelievable. It would be a cold day in Hell before Bulma Briefs admitted she did anything wrong," Yamcha grit between his teeth.

Fury colored Bulma's cheeks, and she straightened."I've been so happy without you in my life. Why did you have to ruin a good thing? If there's one thing I don't miss, it's you, you patronizing asshole!"

Yamcha gaped. The elevator slowed to a stop, the doors working themselves open. "I am __not__ patronizing!" His voice squeaked as he hurried after her out of the elevator. "I just have to defend myself against you constantly!"

"I'm so mean, isn't that right?" Bulma's ground-eating stride carried them quickly down the hall to her door, keys jingling. "I ruined everything, and you did nothing wrong, huh? Get bent, Yamcha!"

Yamcha gasped just as Bulma shoved the key into her door and entered in one swift movement.

And then slammed the door on his face.

Yamcha stared at the wood grain with disbelief.

Then remembered why he came.

His brows slammed down. His knuckles rapped the door. "Bulma," he called, short. "Bulma, open the door so we can talk."

"Ha!" Is all he heard from behind the door.

"Bulma!" His voice rose, and he emitted a tea-whistle of a sigh, leaning in close. "Bulma, for once in your life, can you put aside your selfishness and be reasonable?"

"Can __you?"__

"You're so frustrating!" He hollered.

Her voice speared him through the door. "At least I'm not a __cheater!"__

Yamcha's eyes widened. His mouth clamped shut, jaw tense, and he took a deep breath through his nose. "Fine! I admit it!" Yamcha threw his hands in the air. "I wasn't always perfect. And neither were you!" He started to pace, running his hand through his hair in exasperation. "I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know—" He stopped, put his fist against the door. "Bulma, I did wrong. But, I just didn't…I didn't want to hurt you."

On the other side of the door, Bulma leaned in, pressing her ear against the door.

"I made mistakes, too. Is that what you've wanted to hear all this time? Of course I should have told you I wanted to move on. I should have told you I was…" Yamcha choked, sighed, and then leaned his forehead against the doorway. "I should have told you I was seeing other women," he finally sighed, defeated.

Unseen, several apartment doors had opened, their occupants leaning out to listen.

Bulma's eyes filled with liquid heat, and she crossed her arms over her chest tightly. "Why did you?" She leaned her head against the cold wood, pressing her hand against her heart, guarding it. "What did I do wrong? How was I not good enough?—"

"You didn't do anything wrong. I—" Yamcha pressed his hand against the door."Bulma, you were my first love. You were the first person to accept me when I moved here and entered high society. You were my friend." His voice carried smoothly through the door. "Even if…if I couldn't return your feelings anymore, I still…cared about you. I never wanted to hurt you. And if I said it…" His head bowed. "If I said," he finished thickly, "that I wanted to leave you, after your parents left, after you'd lost everything you'd ever known—I'm not taking pity on you, so just listen!—If I just bailed when you needed someone the most….What kind of friend would I be if I just left?"

The tears fell helplessly now, try as she might to contain them. Her lips pressed together with grief, with resentment, with denial, with regret.

"And I still didn't end up a good friend. I'm sorry I didn't have the guts to end it when I should have," she finally heard him say. "I'm not as strong as you are."

Bulma pressed her forehead against the cool wood and sniffled, trying to reign it in.

Her hand closed on the doorknob, and slowly she turned it.

The door cracked open.

Yamcha, catching movement, looked up with pained eyes.

One watery blue eye peered out at him.

The door opened a little more, and she stood in the space, setting her jaw with resolve.

"Yamcha," she finally said tiredly. "Is this what you came here to say?"

He rolled away from the doorway, and with the same chocolate brown, plaintive eyes she'd fallen for, he looked at her with concern. "No," he said worrisomely, grasping the doorway. "Bulma, I'm here to talk to you about Capsule Corporation."

…

Yamcha and Bulma watched one another uncomfortably. Shifting awkwardly in their chairs, they'd been seated across from the other at a candlelit table on the tail end of the dinner hour.

And then Yamcha spoke.

She had ordered a glass of chardonnay, but now she wished she'd ordered the whole cellar.

Disoriented, all she could hear was high-pitched ringing, like a bomb had just exploded in her lap. "What did you just say?" Her words dropped heavy as stones, and she heard them distantly.

Yamcha crossed his arms on the table. "I bought Capsule Corp."

Bulma blinked. She folded her hands on the table and leaned forward, angling her ear at him. "What now?"

Yamcha took a deep breath, lips drawing flat with the importance of his purpose. "When your parents sold their stock last year, I was in disbelief. My mom wanted me to buy it up so that I could head the company, but I…I couldn't do that to you. To your parent's legacy." He looked at her carefully. "So I bought all the stock I could, and now I'm the majority shareholder." He paused. "And I want you to have them."

"You own…" Her voice trailed. "Capsule Corp?"

The room was spinning.

"Yes." He squirmed. "Capsule Corp wasn't liquidated, like you'd been led to believe. Your dad sold his shares to Capsule's employees, and they'd been sitting on it, ready to earn big but unable to come to an agreement about where to take it without your father's guidance. On one side are scientists themselves, who want to just, do science and make rockets or whatever it is they do, and half of them are just stuffy CEO's who want the cash to flow. Recently, I was able to…persuade…some of the more disingenuous shareholders to sell their stock, and now I own the majority of the company. The only other shareholders left are those loyal to your folks." The look he gave her—of absolute seriousness—leveled her. "Like the original team of engineers your dad employed. Waiting for a Briefs to take the helm." His tone was somber.

Her mouth rounded 'o', moving silently like a fish.

"But why…why…."

He sighed gustily. "Because it was just the right thing to do." He looked at her with rare vulnerability. "And I thought, if anyone should head Capsule, it's you."

She squinted as she tried to make sense of it all. "You 'persuaded' them to sell?" Her nose wrinkled with confusion. "How did you 'persuade' them?"

Dark mischief flashed through Yamcha's eyes, his teeth pearly as he smiled in the soft light. His eyebrows rose, and he leaned close. "Gambling."

"Yamcha, you fucking mafioso." She couldn't keep the awe out of her voice.

His eyes flicked to hers with amusement. "You flatter me," he said dryly.

Yamcha owned Capsule Corporation. He could have taken over Capsule Corp and made billions.

He hadn't.

And, like she'd been slapped, she realized what he was saying.

Capsule Corp was back.

And she was now its master.

She bit her lip. She could really use the money. She was behind on rent, and her electric and water bills, too, and Kami knew she was sick of ramen. And the project with the Saiyan military was ending soon. She'd have to go right back to her old job, fixing light-class star ships for scummy traders and for rich families for their space vacations. And didn't she want to re-enter high society again? She'd be in the spotlight again. Rich. Financially secure. Powerful. Famous. She could have everything she'd ever wanted. She could have it all back.

"My lawyer should be reaching out to you soon about it. We'll talk more about it then, and he can give you all the legalese. We can meet with the other share holders and build an agenda. Then we'll go to the press, and announce it to the cosmos!" He reached out and grasped her hand, holding it lightly, as if he knew he had no right to. She stared at it, eyes shimmering, biting her lip. "Bulma." His voice was grave, careful. He waited for her to look at him, with those whiskey brown eyes, the flame flickering, beating against the glass lamp. He was imploring the woman whom he'd hurt, who he'd once felt deeply for but was not meant to be with. "You are the strongest, most capable woman I know." He fixed his eyes on hers. "I want you to take back Capsule Corporation, and show everyone just what you're made of."

They stared at one another in the candlelight.

Should she?

Could she?

Bulma's mouth opened on an answer, eyes a deep sapphire in the low light.

She could have everything back to the way it was before.

She could go back to the woman she was before. Resurrect her. Live without care in another woman's skin.

There was an answer that was ready to leap from her, and even she didn't know what it could be.

"I don't know." Before drawing her hand away.

When Bulma shuffled her way home, chewing her lip, she could barely pick her feet up off the ground and walk like a proper adult. She just wanted to melt into a puddle on the sidewalk and wait to be evaporated.

The city felt especially lonely tonight, so big and empty, making her feel small, and overfull.

…

Her blueprint was rolled neatly inside a cylinder which she placed alongside several others on a table in the vast Saiyan hangar.

And then walked out the doors of the room for good.

The hallway was eerily empty, her boots echoing. She moved slowly, wanting to take in the Saiyan base one more time before she had to leave forever. But it just wasn't the same when it wasn't raucous and alive with Saiyans lighting it up, calling one another names and wrestling and coming on to her. Word was going around that some of them were petitioning for her likeness to be painted on the side of a Saiyan war ship, a blue-haired pin-up holding a missile and laughing gleefully.

It had been weeks since she'd heard from Vegeta.

It was sweet of him to ask, but at this point she imagined he was so deep in space, no walky of even hers could puncture the distance.

It wasn't going to work.

What exactly? She didn't know. She just had this oppressive weight on her chest and this thing whispering into her ear that everything was going to wind up in flames. Bills. Vegeta. Capsule Corporation. It was a panicked heartbeat, this wild certainty pumping her, shouting that it all was going to crush her. Everything was set up so perfectly for her to fail. She couldn't breathe. She needed air.

As her boots took her to the front door for the last time, she slowed at the bulletin board, where flyers had been pinned into a mosaic. One had a picture of a Saiyan passed out on a sidewalk, with "Have you seen this Saiyan's dignity?" above. The 'n's' were backwards. "Call 98-555-8096 for free hand jobs" was scrawled at the bottom.

Her eyes were drawn to the light blue flyer with the official stamp of the Saiyan Army and the Intergalactic Alliance on it.

 _"_ _ _TECHNICIAN'S NEEDED,"__ it said. _"_ _ _Fly for the Alliance: Get real experience on a heavy cruiser. Leave your troubles behind and learn duty and purpose with our technician program. Flight's depart at the end of each month. Contact the Saiyan Navy Employment Office."__

A feminine hand with pink fingernails tore the flyer from the board, folded it neatly, and slipped it into her pocket.

…

In chiaroscuro light, with a hand of cards between each man and woman in their black and emerald battle armor, the smoke ghosted ribbons through the pool of light. A cigarette hung from one's clenched teeth. A bottle thumped on the table as it was sat decisively against the round table. A toothy knife slickly cleaned the dirt from out of another's nails.

"Do you think," a voice cut in, rumbling up from the table with a hellishness that would cause the hair on a human's necks to stand on end, "that these new breastplates make me look fat?"

Raditz turned left, then right, looking down at himself. "Because they're not as flattering as the last ones."

"I don't think they're as stretchy," Toma lamented sadly, pulling at the belly of his. "If I eat too much, it doesn't have as much forgiveness." He rapped his knuckles against it. "It's too hard."

"That's what she said." Raditz began tugging his breastplate over his head. "Don't tell Vegeta, but I'm taking this off. If the siren goes off, it takes one second to put it back on anyway."

Fasha placed a card down on the table. "How many more days of this." She drew on her cigarette. "I don't think I can survive this tedium. I'd rather be on the ground knocking heads together."  
Delicate negotiations were taking place down below. The Saiyans had done their part: a tyrant lay toppled and the cinders of his army were still hot. Now came the diplomacy. The Saiyan special forces ship hovered over the striped green and yellow planet as a threat, a reminder. Things would go the Intergalactic Alliance's way, or the Saiyans would cause the sky to come crashing down, and this time, they'd be fully let off their leashes.

"I wonder what everyone is doing on Earth without us."

"I wonder if that girl I banged before we left is thinking about me."

Toma's voice was pure and wistful in the smoky darkness. "You're such a romantic."

"You guys are failing the Bechdel test," Fasha muttered, placing a card down on the table.

Raditz's eyes narrowed, and he leaned in, fixing her with a stare. "I wonder what that engineer is up to," he said with suspicion.

"Who? Is she pretty?"

"Vegeta's engineer," Raditz hissed, kicking Toma's foot. A couple other Saiyans slid in beside them, joining the game. Raditz eyes flicked up to Fasha's. "Besides, even if she wasn't pretty," he said confidentially, eyes full of uneasiness, "she's smart."

"Why'd anyone date a smart girl?" One of the new Saiyan's remarked, serving only to look more confused. "I mean, who cares if she's smart," the new guy scoffed, looking around with astonishment. "Your brain's not the organ that gets hard."

"Who? What's she look like?"

"That Earthling engineer. Blue hair. Can't miss her."

"Who's dating her?"

"I really don't know if I should say anything," Raditz said peevishly.

"You shouldn't," Fasha muttered.

"Doesn't sound like she's dating anyone," one of the Saiyans said overconfidently, spreading his cards, "if no one's claiming her."

"But seriously," one of the new guys said with impatience. "How hot is she? Describe her in detail."

"On a scale of 'I'd cry but still hit it' to 'I'd ascend to heaven while I hit it,' she's a—OOF," Raditz sucked in air as Fasha pulled her fist back from his stomach.

"Should have worn your breastplate," Fasha said pleasantly, glancing over her cards.

"Yeah guys," Raditz choked, "I really cant say," he said with false regret.

Nappa slid in, belly pressing against the table, nearly shoulder to shoulder with the other Saiyans, who scooted their chairs away, grumbling.

"Yours is touching mine," Nappa bit, sending a scathing look down at Toma's tail that lay carelessly behind him on his chair and brushed Nappa's thigh.

"Where's touching?" Raditz looked around spastically. "What's touching what?" He tsk'd, looking sallow. "This deployment is barely a month in and I'm ready ready to fuck a rock."

"It already smells like unwashed balls in here," Fasha complained.

Nappa twirled his mustache in his fingers, scanning his cards. "A woman with brains," he said pessimistically, picking up the conversation where it'd been left off. "A woman with a temper." He cast a look at Fasha. "A beautiful, smart woman with a sense of self-worth. Spells trouble to me, men."

Fasha's elbow hit the table with a thunk, shaking her head with a feeling that many women of all races know as ' _ _The sad part is I'm not surprised a man just said that.'__ "Why isn't it an asset?" Fasha interjected.

"Either way," Nappa's eyes squinted, "with a woman like that, a Saiyan's hands are full. And Saiyans need their hands free to defend off attacks."

"Your hands aren't free," she breezed. "They're yanking on your cocks most of the time."

"You're just bitter because none of those kinds of women want to be with you," Raditz shot at Nappa.

As Nappa knocked Raditz from his chair and Raditz fell into the lap of Toma, Vegeta turned away from the doorway with crossed arms.

His squad knew.

They knew __who.__ They knew __what.__ They __knew.__

Vegeta's eyes widened with the realization, his heart beat quickening.

It should eviscerate him. He'd suspected someone knew, with the condoms and all, but that could be explained away. That could have been a shot at the lack of sex he'd been getting. He should be packing up, slamming all his walls up and bolting from the situation. It was a lack that all could plainly see, having a woman for more than just sexual escapades, needing anyone but oneself. Many Saiyans were settling down these days without fear that it'd be seen by their brothers and sisters in war as weakness. Times were changing. But Vegeta didn't want to be many Saiyans, he wanted to be better than them. He'd had one goal all these years: get strong, assume the power that naturally spun from that. All that had mattered to him was each mission, sinking his teeth into flesh, the killing moon. Single-minded purpose was the path to greatness.

He'd never thought he'd be capable of feeling anything for a woman other than an itching biological need, but what he felt for Bulma transcended what he thought Saiyans were capable of feeling for others, and now things were complicated. Like an original copy and a mangled transfer, they didn't line up. The logic that had governed his life didn't apply anymore. Or maybe he didn't want it to. The rules he'd once played by judged him, determined he wasn't hard enough and fixated enough on his goal. But lately he'd been rewriting the rules each day in his favor as new obstacles arose. He'd feared others would see her as a symbol of his inadequacy. That, instead of remaining untouchable, he'd become the butt of the joke. That's what he'd been telling himself all this time, keeping her secret.

He should be calling it quits, waving the white flag. But all he could do is remember her face peering up at him with infectious happiness, chuckling underneath him, her bare chest skimming his. Pressing his nose with her fingertip, husky voice admonishing him. _"_ _ _Relax, Vegeta. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Take it off. Leave it lying right there on my floor. Now, c'mere."__

How would they react if they met her? Fuck them, what about him? They'd probably embarrass him endlessly. Vegeta could feel his face heating with the possibility. It was better for both of them to keep her away from other Saiyans and preserve the distance. And if the rest of the world knew? If word got around and reached the other dim-witted, third class Saiyans that crammed the base? The fur on his tail bristled. They didn't deserve to know her. If they wanted to say something they could eat a fist, but he wouldn't let them taint the thing that was all his and only his.

When he got back to Earth, he would be a new man, a Saiyan who was openly toeing the line, balancing his feelings for a woman while he was a living breathing death's scythe.

Word would get around.

That didn't mean he had to share her.

Vegeta turned around, ready to make a beeline for the kitchens, when he came face to face with the specter that had haunted him this entire mission.

Goku, slurping noodles, came to a halt as he came face to face with the grumpy and unapproachable general.

Eyes rolling at his luck, Vegeta turned right back around and resumed his post at the doorway.

Goku wandered into the fray, unfolded a chair, and set it in the circle of Saiyans. "Reminds me of ChiChi. My wife has a temper." He slurped his noodles. "The first time we met, she punched me and sent me straight through a tree. I asked her out as soon as I could manage to stand up."

"I don't think I could get married," one of the Saiyans says.

"Life's too short not to cum fast," another one offered. "Heeeeey, there's Vegeta!" Vegeta tightened in the spotlight. "Hey, how's those condoms working out for you?"

"The ones he charred broiled on his desk?" Nappa snorted.

Toma, Raditz, and Fasha shared a look, harboring a secret between them.

"You don't want to do that." Goku flashed a smile at Vegeta that was uncomfortably innocent. "That's how ChiChi and I got pregnant."

The room flashed blue with ki, the lights flickering as a gust of air assaulted them. "If I had a kid, it'd be a thousand times better than yours!" Vegeta yelled.

Vegeta's crew looked at each other in astonishment.

"Boy, Goku gets under Vegeta's skin more than I do," Raditz muttered.

Suddenly an alarm blared through the ship, and the Saiyans all jumped to their feet.

"Finally, I get to get off this godforsaken ship," Vegeta complained, shoving his breastplate over his head.

"Finally, action!" Goku grinned, his tail curling around his waist neatly. Behind him, Raditz struggled to put his breastplate back on.

Toma sighed, watching Raditz curse, his head stuck inside his breastplate. Raditz's long, wild hair puffed out of the head hole as other Saiyans darted around him. Toma pulled on his gloves dejectedly. "Can you believe they're sending us right back around on another mission after this?" Everyone ignored them.

"Sounds like someone didn't accept the terms of the treaty," Fasha remarked.

"Great news for us." Vegeta's eyes flashed with anticipation. "Out of my way, Kakarot." Vegeta sent him a competitive smirk, concerns lost to the rush of imminent battle. "It's my time to shine."

…

Waiting for Bulma to get dressed, Yamcha stood politely in the living room, eyes roaming her stuff. He'd called her to tell her she needed to meet him and their lawyers for dinner. Instead, she'd just snapped at him, "I'm still at work. Pick me up at my place." Unlike some people, she'd said under her breath as she'd let him in, __she__ didn't have a car that would get her their on time.

It had been months since he'd been here. Time passed so quickly, he thought, sighing, and things never turned out like you imagined they would.

Yamcha did a double-take, eyes alighting on a familiar piece of equipment in the corner of the chair.

A Saiyan's suit and breastplate.

His eyes widened. He squeezed them shut.

When he reopened his eyes, it hadn't disappeared. No, it remained, not a fixture of his imagination but a very dire, mysterious reality, a dry cleaning tag sticking out of it.

Bulma's bedroom door clicked as it opened. "Just so you know," she said saucily, giving him side eye, "I'm wearing my ugliest underwear under this dress." She popped a piece of bubble gum into her mouth. "You don't deserve any better," she said through her chewing.

He nodded, sighing.

He opened the front door politely, motioning for her to go first.

But took one last look behind him at the suit and breastplate, lying forebodingly on Bulma's sofa.

…

Vegeta wiped blood from his lip.

Staring out at the darkness beyond the windshield, space in all its vastness gazed back at him with razor-edged emptiness.

Vegeta had rejected medical care, needing to partner with the swelling and bruising, the sawing pain, the blood drying on his skin. There was something meditative about pain.

His body was a tool of destruction. For his pleasure, for his Saiyan legacy, for the Alliance. All these months on Earth he'd never felt so helpless. Hadn't had a single mission. Hadn't had a real fight. Hadn't connected with anyone, any idea, himself. Outside of battle, he didn't feel right. Outside of battle, he wasn't in control of himself. He wasn't his own, he was owned. A ghost going through the motions. He was owned by this anxiety that was always wrapped around his throat. But she made him his own with a single touch, made him solid. His world had been smaller and simpler before her. Or was it the other way around?

The stars were pure and silvery, unlike anything she'd see through the light pollution of the city. And at that moment, he wanted nothing more than her standing here beside him, the universe open before them both.

Vegeta took out his phone, and alone in the cabin, he snapped a photo of the silent, still, star-speckled panorama of space, in all of its possibility.

And hit send.

…

The phone was pressed against Bulma's cheek, and she sweated against it as twilight fell hard around the city. Bulma gave her thanks to the caller and hung up, slipping the phone back into her pocket.

And came to a halt.

She was having a hallucination or something.

A flame-haired silhouette stood at the top of the hill, looking down on her.

Everything about him screamed Strength. Intelligence. Sex.

Her mouth parted. She squinted.

Slowly she took a few careful steps closer, peering at the darkness.

Wet heat invaded her vision.

And Bulma was running, sprinting up the hill and throwing her arms around Vegeta's neck with a whoop, hanging from his solid frame and squeezing him tight.

He smelled just like she remembered. She pressed her lips fervently against his cheek, and the salt of his skin was on her lips, on her tongue. She thrust her hands into his thick hair, pressing his forehead against hers.

Then she frowned, staring at the wet heat on her fingertips. "Vegeta," she said, befuddled. "You're bleeding."

She pulled back, watching him with apprehension.

"Take me home," he only said.

…

Vegeta's head rested in her lap.

"Is your job always this dangerous?" She wrapped his arm carefully. There was a deep gash down his forearm that would have healed into an ugly seam along bone if he weren't Saiyan.

"Yes," he only answered.

"I don't know that I approve," Bulma said, frowning.

Vegeta's eyes closed. "This is who I am."

Her mouth thinned skeptically, but she just finished taping him up.

"Then make sure you always win, okay?" Her fingers brushed the hair at his temple.

He opened one eye and watched her before chuffing with humor. "I always win."

A smile flit over her face, and she ran her first two fingers over the line of his cheek.

"I'm tired," Vegeta only said heavily, closing his eyes again.

"Are you hungry?" She asked, running her fingers through his hair. She couldn't stop touching him.

"Very," he rumbled.

Carefully she extricated herself from him on the couch. Vegeta didn't complain, just threw his arm over his eyes heavily.

She bent over into his fridge and frowned. "Vegeta, you don't have anything in your fridge." She looked over her shoulder. "Want me to go get something?"

He grunted his agreement.

It took half an hour. Bulma, with an arm hanging with grocery bags, glanced in to Vegeta's living room.

Vegeta was asleep on the couch, chest expanding and falling with even breaths.

She put away all the groceries, shutting the fridge quietly, and then curled up beside him on the couch. She rested her hand above his heart. His back was hot against her cheek. She absorbed the feel of him, imprinting it on her consciousness, burying it deep and protected inside. How could she ever break it off with this man? What was between them didn't bow to anyone, not even them.

The flyer still burned in her back pocket. If anyone were to check her phone, they'd find a new and strange number, an incoming call recently taken, with an area code a clever mind could locate inside the city, tracking it directly to the Saiyan Navy Employment Office.

And then she burrowed her head into the crook of his neck, clutching his waist tight, and closed her eyes against the world.


	8. Chapter 8

There were two eventualities Vegeta had prepared for all his life. One: He'd soar through the ranks of the Armed Forces on the coattails of natural ability. Power and accolades would just fall into his lap. Two: He would finally get off Earth.

This detour to Earth wasn't how it was supposed to happen. It was a dark timeline. Admittedly, he hadn't been planning leaving it all his life because he hadn't been on Earth much longer than a Standard year. But it _felt_ like a lifetime, an eternity ago, when a totally different Vegeta had stomped his way out of a star ship, another Vegeta who'd made some questionable choices and (cleverly) insulted his commander and so kicked rocks up the path to this new, utterly humiliating duty station. Glorious power and freedom, these were that Vegeta's fantasies, and should have been his most mouthwatering prospects.

Today, he was being served a portion of both.

"This isn't what I had hoped I'd be forced to relay to you today," his commander was grumbling, his thick frame wedged uncomfortably in the office chair. He steepled his fingers and glared at Vegeta, who sat slouched sideways across from him, staring with boredom over his shoulder. "Actually, I was relishing the thought of seeing you humbled and put on trash duty for the rest of the foreseeable future." The man's fleshy eyes narrowed. "But those above me don't feel the same way. They say," his commander's voice was a whip crack, "that you've been about as humbled as a Saiyan can be. That there is nothing as antithetical to our nature as the lack of a good fight, and boy, have you been deprived of one. They say," he gusted, "that you ate your humble pie, because there is nothing worse that could happen to a big-headed, loud-mouthed, high-strung Saiyan than having to simply endure a jab at his pride. And that you have. Because, for weeks, you've been an unimportant nobody."

Vegeta's eyes flashed. The commander didn't notice or care. He just held out his hands in confusion, staring into his big palms as if tortured with thought. "But there's been no sound from you. I don't understand it. It's as if I've woken up in an alternate universe, one where Vegeta isn't an irate jackass. You haven't lashed back. For weeks, you haven't attempted even one revenge scheme. It would have failed stupendously, as it always does. But not a single dramatic scene out of you." He turned his suspicions on Vegeta. "You can't sit still for long," he accused. "You're a workaholic, for one. And as my boss keeps reminding me, you're a self-serving saboteur. One insult to your pride and you're retaliating, your common sense left by the wayside, your goddamned battle-honed wits abandoned at the altar of your arrogance."

"Poetic," Vegeta muttered.

"Your rap sheet is a mile long with these temper tantrums. Half the fights you pick are with us. And yet you haven't bitched since we clamped on the wheel boot." The commander's big voice flipped, then, from appalled to cheeky. "And we all know how much you despise this place. That's part of it's appeal. Earth breaks us all, doesn't it?" He smirked at Vegeta's expense, a thoroughly hostile Saiyan gesture.

Vegeta appreciated giving them much more than receiving them.

"We had a pool." His commander leaned back, thumbing his chin. "Lots of losers, we had. Lots of bets lost. Some bet you'd lob a ball of ki at the city and we'd have to go on level one lockdown trying to peel you from your soapbox in the city square. Some bet you'd jettison a star ship and try to wrest the mission for yourself. There was even one bet that you'd abdicate your position and go back home. Wasn't he surprised."

Vegeta went slack jawed for a brief moment before his eyes narrowed and found the spot on the wall behind his commander again. He folded his arms over his chest, resuming his sullen rebellion.

"You're one hell of a hardass, I'll give you that," the commander grumbled, shifting in his seat again in discomfort. " _Earth_ is the punishment, and you're surviving. And, overall..." His commander sighed big, as if all the air was leaving him like a deflating balloon. "That is what makes you such a fine Saiyan."

Vegeta's world crumbled and rebuilt in a second.

The big man's expression softened. "You've served the Saiyan Forces for over half your life. You don't know what it's like to be anything but a fighter, do you? Some say you put yourself first, and they're not wrong—but every bad decision you make revolves around a grand battle. You have to learn restraint, we all agree on that. You put your team in danger when you don't. Following directives from your superiors—admitting you _have_ superiors!—is Military 101. But what's those old, Saiyan religious nuts say? _Dei dono sum quod sum."_

" _By the god's grace, I am what I am,"_ Vegeta mumbled.

"We are what we are, for better and for worse. We are Saiyan. Look around you." The commander's arm swept outward. "Look at all these weak Earthling do-gooders. Think back on every planet you've visited, where all your star-hopping has taken you. There aren't many races that can hold a candle to the power we have just in our pinky fingers. Being Saiyan is a privilege." His glare darkened as he latticed his knuckles together into a fist, then tucked them under his chin to survey the wayward asshole before him. "It sickens me to say, but you have dedicated yourself to _being_ a Saiyan. In every bad decision you make, you're just seeking your best Saiyan self, even if you get in your own way trying to fulfill it. Fuck, it reads like a self-help book. But there's the kicker: A true Saiyan always chases the fight, and you're no exception." The commander's head now sank into his hands. His thumbs rubbed little circles against his temples. "Learn to swallow humility every once in awhile, Vegeta. _Embrace_ the struggle. Don't resist it." With one last, aggrieved sigh, Vegeta's boss looked up and pinned him with a hard stare. "Despite all of this, your betters have agreed you are one shining fucking testament to our Saiyan blood."

Vegeta choked on "betters" but sat across from his commander trying not to look too smug. This was a truly titillating morning. And here he'd begun to think he couldn't do anything right!

"You, a shining star," the commander snorted, rubbing the pinched bridge of his nose wearily. Vegeta was known to give his commander's migraines. "You see, we've agreed—some of us reluctantly—that you're ready for another mission." One eye squinted open, pinning him to his seat, and the commander's grin started curling at the edges. "That's why we chose you to lead your stupid, merry men—and the only capable one among you, Fasha—on a special mission to the Deep Sea."

Vegeta blinked. "The Deep Sea?"

"Through a partnership with I.A. The Intergalactic Alliance will shepherd you there, cloaked in obscurity on a cruise ship. Once in the Andromeda belt, your squad and a very limited number of I.A. support squads will take a light-class battle cruiser to Oblemon, where you will intercept the smuggling ring the Red Eyed Infamy and take their leaders out of the picture for once and for all. I'll have the dossier sent to you."

Vegeta's brain wasn't working. First he'd heard that, because he never followed orders, he was the poster child of the Saiyan Special Forces. And then he had heard—

"This mission will get you off Earth for several months." His commander clapped his hands together. "You are the hero boy here. I'd focus all my energy on staying out of trouble if I were you, because this is your absolute LAST CHANCE," he bellowed, "to prove you're worth these fucking migraines. No selfishness that doesn't contribute to the mission. No heavy drinking. No gambling. No commandeering vessels," he looked pointedly at Vegeta, who shrank a little at the memory. He'd almost been demoted for that one. "No blowing up planets," his commander continued. "No bar brawls with the locals. And no women." The commander chuckle snorted, slapping the table's edge. "Vegeta. With a woman. That's a laugh!"

Vegeta decided suddenly that his commander's face would look better with a fist shaped indent in it.

His commander abruptly stood and saluted. "Congratulations. You are now again the starbuck of the elite Roamers. Display that you can work _with_ a team without any of your usual diva antics and you'll win your ticket off of Earth by the end of the year."

Something was happening to Vegeta, because his ears started ringing and his chest felt like someone heavy was sitting on it and he could only see one cheerful, female face tilted up at him, goading him to kiss her. Was the tinnitus he'd earned from lots of close-proximity explosions finally rearing its head?

"I gotta say, this will either make you or break you." The commander was chortling. "Can't wait for either outcome. You have one day. Your squad will let you know when it's time. Good luck...Major."

Vegeta barely had time to swallow the promotion before the dread settled in.

...

Bulma knew one thing, and one thing only:

Blue was a very flattering color on her.

The crumpled blue pamphlet was falling out of her purse, the worn paper with the Saiyan Navy and Intergalactic Alliance emblems stamped on the corner and a smiling Earthling giving a thumb's up on the front. The happy figure wore what Bulma assumed was their naval uniform, a shapeless, blue ensemble. It would look terrible on her. She had one day left. Hours, minutes, even, to measure her future by. She'd have to report by tomorrow, if she finally penned her smooth, looping signature to paper.

"I don't know what I'm doing with my life," she conceded into the hem of a tight black dress, a scrappy suede number that had no business being worn out of a bedroom. It was the fourth time she'd said it that night, and the eighth dress she'd tried on. Bulma was beginning to see and ignore a pattern between her shopping habit and the level of stress in her life.

From the crack between the curtain and the wall, a dark eye rolled, and ChiChi's lips flattened, silver hoop earrings glinting against raven's wing hair.

"I don't see you offering any solutions, ChiChi." Bulma shot her a look. "Why would Yamcha help me like this? A part of me thinks this is all part of his master plan to deliberately set me up for failure."

"Yamcha's dick may not get hard, but he's not vengeful," ChiChi pointed out.

"I know that," Bulma snapped, and then sighed through her nose, tucking her short hair behind her ear impatiently. "I know that. But why would he go out of his way for me now? He couldn't even be persuaded to give me five minutes when we were dating." Bulma stared at the wall of the fitting room. "A part of me wants to snatch what he's given me, turn it into gold, and then laugh in his face." She could imagine it now: holding a flute of champagne in a champagne dress, laughing with her head thrown back, surrounded by bare-chested men on all sides as money fluttered down around them like confetti.

"That would be a very Bulma thing to do," ChiChi reasoned.

"But I can't." Bulma whined. "I just can't."

For a reason that she was having a difficult time relaying to anyone, Bulma was...stuck. She was paralyzed. On hold. In stasis. In a hibernation with no promise of thaw. She was incapable of making a choice, and it was because something was _wrong_ with her. She felt it, as real as drawing fingers over a rip in her thigh hi's. The wrongness was a profoundly menacing black hole spiraling in her gut. It was an inarguable fact stamped with the force of every heart beat. A thing that was both so deeply a part of her and so foreign to her being but couldn't be exorcised. She knew its presence defied the logic of how Bulma's worked, because Bulma's thrived on work and self-confidence and racy texts from flame-haired Saiyans who commented on how perfectly her ass was shaped. She knew crumbling like this meant that she wasn't as strong as she thought she was, and it made her melancholy. She knew it was totally unlike her to feel this way. But there it was.

She wasn't leaping at the chance to have her old life back. To be rich, to be famous, to be carefree. It didn't feel like she deserved it.

She was a woman who had suffered from a lapse of the self-esteem.

That was a miserable reality to have to stare in the face. And an even more jagged pill to swallow? Even if she could return in glory, she didn't _want_ to go back. Bulma groaned, her head sinking into her hands. It was true. She rather liked the future she had stumbled into, if her meager wage was excluded, a future that was all a very hot man's persistent and dirty texts and after work his finger nudging her thighs to part. Why couldn't this thing she had with Vegeta, this slice of pie, just last forever? A place with no overdue rent, no weird buried past, no ex-boyfriends with dubious offers. Vegeta. Vegeta was like, being with him was like...like...like a year spent hyperventilating in a locked and windowless room, and suddenly a window appeared, and she could throw it open and lean out, and surprise, there's a whole world outside, where the meadow-fragrant wind tossed her hair around and the sun laid its warm hand on her head and her smile just grew and grew.

Bulma was not a woman who wanted to afford a man too much credit for her successes, but there was something about this particular man that made her feel like she could grab life by the horns and shake it, laughing. She didn't think going back to her old life would align with this new feeling of flight, this new...Bulma. She didn't want to go back to the locked and stifling room. The stars were the limit. The stars were the literal limit if she took the job as a contractor for the Space Navy.

ChiChi wasn't a mind reader, though, and couldn't hear the internal dialogue whirling, seizing, and tumbling around in Bulma's head like a shoddy carnival ride. Instead, she was giving Bulma a look through the slit of the dressing room curtain like Bulma was sitting on a dressing room floor teary-eyed in an expensive dress she couldn't afford while refusing a handful of money.

"Okay," ChiChi drawled. "So now what. What are you gonna do? Keep grinding and making minimum wage at that busted up star ship hangar downtown? You have no opportunities there. There's no room to grow. You hate it there. Bulma, nothing will change."

Bulma glanced down at the mechanic's uniform that lay in a limp pile on the floor next to a pair of glossy red heels with a price tag worth four of her most overdue bills. Today had been her first day back to work. Now that her internship with the Saiyan military was over, she had no other choice but to slink back to Poseidon's Hangar. What other option did she have? Her boss had offered her the only opportunity at his disposal: a temporary position wrenching on Saiyan crafts for the experience, with a blueprint contest thrown into the mix. The blueprints would take weeks to judge, weeks she didn't have to keep her head above water. It was like holding out for getting pop star famous and knowing she couldn't hold a tune. Bulma liked to sing, but Bulma wasn't going to be singing in front of anyone anytime soon without a few drinks in her.

"So what next?" ChiChi was saying. "It's not like you could trap a man." ChiChi stilled and gave Bulma a hard look. "Wait. Does Vegeta have money?"

Bulma looked down at herself in the dress that she couldn't afford that suited a lifestyle she no longer lived. The purse with no cash in it. The grimy work jumpsuit with a wadded up final warning slip in it. The air she couldn't afford to breathe.

Bulma felt like the oxygen was being sucked out of the room. Maybe it was that black hole in her chest again. Somewhere in there was an untameable urgency to run. A wild, drum-beating, tempestuous plea to escape.

But where could she go?

The dress got stuck around her ears as she frantically tugged it up, and with frustration, she slung it to the floor and made her way out of the cramped room.

She milled around the panty bar—the latest trend in the city to display fine lingerie—thumbing through jewel shades, creamy ivory lace, and slippery latex. Her fingers ran over them longingly. She held up the panties, eyeballing them as if they hid an answer. Bulma stared at their lace edges, waiting for it to be offered up.

Her hands, and the panties with them, fell limply to the table. Things were so dire right now that she was asking a pair of panties for advice.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Eyebrows raising, she hunted through all the change and lint of her work pants and, finding it, turned its face up.

Bulma's eyes widened in surprise.

Yamcha.

 _Finalizing the paperwork tomorrow. Meet me for signing and champagne._

Attached was the address of a very swanky restaurant and three emojis: glasses toasting, a fountain pen, and a rose.

"Ugh." Bulma nursed her forehead delicately on her fingertips.

She'd heard more from Yamcha today than she had of Vegeta. Not a single text. Not a single inquiry into the shade of her panties, or the text she was really lemming for, the one where Vegeta asked what they were doing tonight and she gave a list of demands. _1\. My place 2. Your scouter and gloves on 3. Nothing else._ God she loved it when he left his gloves on. Although she equally adored it when he took them off with his teeth.

The need for a text from him, just for evidence that he was alive and still on Earth or that he was thinking about her even a fraction as crazily as she did him was becoming such a huge and gluttonous thing that she felt consumed by it. She felt it in her gut, she felt it in her chest, she felt it in every graspy finger tip—this urgency to be acknowledged and held and seen and needed. It made her feel like a piece on a chess board that someone had picked up and placed onto a new square when she wasn't looking.

In a relationship that was supposed to have no strings, her heart was suddenly on the line.

Curled up against his side last night, she could not have fit more perfectly against someone. She'd startled awake when he stirred to life well past midnight. The streetlight from outside had gilded his eyelashes and the tufts of his thick hair, and her heart had grown raw and tender. She'd felt an unshakable need to possess this man, and be possessed by him. She'd fit her mouth to his and he'd kissed her, trapped to his chest, as if he were searching for the essence of life, chasing it with the stroke of his tongue until she felt the Bulma she'd had to hold together all year came apart in his arms.

When her alarm had woken her for work, he was gone, the sheets cold. Bulma had sat up in bed, searching the room dismally for something she recognized she could never completely own.

ChiChi was right. She had to be real with herself.

Vegeta was a thing she desperately wanted, and Vegeta was not a long-term thing. No matter how the dice were rolled or how the cloth was cut or whatever the object was that did something, Earth was a temporary duty station. They were a Venn diagram, two opposing colored bubbles, and the only time they met in the middle was when he was shelved on Earth because of bad behavior and wanted to mash privates. She was Earth, and Earth was not his final destination. His job would have him hopping from planet to planet, from...bed to bed. He wouldn't always be hers. He wasn't hers now.

Saiyans, damn them. Being a warrior was an inseparable part of them. It was cold, inarguable fact. And warriors didn't just sit around on the couch and pop potato chips, or work a customer service gig and bring home a salary to their girlfriends and their girlfriend's cat. They ate and breathed the fight. They left their girlfriends to go knock heads in homoerotic displays of strength. She'd seen it before in movies. And it was probably why all Saiyans looked like they'd had their Wheaties for breakfast. Which gym did they go to, anyway? All of them?

He wouldn't give that up for her. He _couldn't_ , even if she tied him to the bedposts. Bulma's brows knit as she gave some thought to how long she might be able to distract him from his work with just her slick wet ache and every wanton technique she could throw at him. Her mouth turned down. Not long enough. She'd eventually have to drink some water and take a few gulping breaths, at least. A woman could only have so many orgasms! The thought was depressing.

ChiChi and Eighteen were watching her with concern from the corners of their eyes. Bulma had asked them to meet her after work because the clingy lunacy that had built up in her all day would have her dashing to Saiyan Command if she didn't, throwing herself at Vegeta in front of everyone, clinging to his perfectly sculpted bicep and begging him to stay. She couldn't decide whether she wanted most to ugly-cry or grind on it. If she rubbed herself enough on it, would her scent imprint onto his, warning other females off? Her laugh was edged with hysteria, and her friend's eyed her nervously.

"Bulma, are you muttering?"

"No," she denied testily under her breath.

It just wasn't fair to ask him for more than they originally bargained for. She should really just take what she could get. Wasn't it enough for her to have him the few chances she'd get?

Nope. She didn't know when it had happened, but it had, and sure, that's how this had started, with panting over the line and a muffled "fuck" groaned into a shoulder in the dark. But like the two complicated mammals they were, it had evolved. It had evolved, and her desires had evolved, and her expectations had evolved, and none of it fit at all in the original arrangement.

Her phone buzzed again, doing its little shaky dance in her pocket. Putting the pair of black panties down carefully and smoothing the wadded ball out apologetically, she glanced down again at her phone.

Vegeta.

Her heart stumbled.

Stoic black text on a white screen.

 _Don't have time. Find you tomorrow._

The bottom dropped out of Bulma's stomach. She felt her eyes heat, and she blinked rapidly and dumped her phone back in her pocket.

She was just pitiful.

How long would this go on? Until she was living in a cardboard box in an alley, recently dumped and unable to pick herself up from her parent's leaving her high and dry? Where would she even fit all her shoes? Would she forever be a woman men were leaving?

But wasn't she a woman with free will? Wasn't she...wasn't she a woman smart enough to conceive another way?

"Guys?" Bulma's voice was thin and warbling even to her ears. She hazarded a glance in their direction.

From over the table of folded panties, Eighteen and ChiChi looked up at the same time.

"What if I..." Her voice trailed off, and her gaze skipped across the panties before them. "What if I told you, I have an idea?"

She dragged the pamphlet from her back pocket and handed it to them.

After a long look, ChiChi glanced back up, gawking.

"Ohmygod, YES!" ChiChi belted it, surprising the other women and the shoppers around them. "Go have an adventure!" ChiChi's face steeled into a cold mask of resentment. "Do it for those of us who can't leave our homes without a diaper bag stuffed with enough shit to get us through a nuclear fallout."

"Maybe it would be like a vacation," offered Eighteen.

"Get out of here for a few months, come back well rested, make a decision about Capsule," ChiChi laid out, like they were talking about their dinner plans.

"Yeah," Bulma agreed half-heartedly. "Yeah!" She said, this time with more animation.

She'd make a little money, see the sights the universe had to offer. She'd always wanted to road trip through space. She'd know what to do about Capsule by then. About herself. Maybe she'd have the answers then. Maybe she'd come back to Earth, naturally more sophisticated and more beautiful than ever before, and they'd run into the other at the spaceport and she'd say, _"Oh, hello there,"_ and he'd say, _"How do you do? What panties are you wearing today?"_ And when he left on missions she'd be so busy helming an empire that it wouldn't hurt, and when he finally left for good she wouldn't even bat an eye because she was so successful and so self-satisfied. She could have her cake and eat it, too.

ChiChi was talking. "Yamcha wouldn't hold it against you if it took another couple months before Capsule gets off the ground. After all, it's waited all this time anyway, right?"

Bulma sighed, and then dashed away the unexpected tears angrily. She was suddenly overwhelmed with helpless frustration. "I hate men."

"You could find a man on your trip to take your mind off both Yamcha and your Saiyan. What happens in space," Eighteen reminded them, popping her gum, "stays in space."

Bulma made a face.

She had it bad.

"Girl," ChiChi said with horror, "don't tell me you're not interested in flirting with handsome soldiers and space hunks."

Bulma balked, limning the lace waist of a panty with her finger. "The last thing I need is another man." She was deflecting.

"What about this guy?" Eighteen was suddenly shoving her phone into Bulma's line of sight, and Bulma blinked a few times to focus before she realized what was staring her in the face.

"A dating app?" Bulma gasped, offended. "You won't see me on _ShipLove._ " Bulma bristled. "I'm not _that_ desperate." Yet.

"You can even sort by star ship!"

"If I didn't have milk leaking out my breasts, I would be hooking up with everrrryone on that app." ChiChi's voice lowered with earnestness. "I'd be such a whore."

Eighteen glanced at Bulma. "You're single, right? Then why not?"

"I'm not... _not_ single," she hedged. "But..."

Eighteen and ChiChi watched her sympathetically, like love was a disease she'd caught that they'd suffered through, too.

ChiChi put her hand on Bulma's shoulder."Maybe your Saiyan was never meant to be a long-time thing," she opted gently. "He was fun when you needed it, and now you have to part ways. But there are a lot of hot fish in the space sea." ChiChi and Eighteen's faces floated close in Bulma's watery vision, their eyes brimming with concern. Come to think of it, they'd never talked about feelings like this while she was dating Yamcha. Most of their discussion had centered around the "how to" on voodoo dolls and sneaking laxatives in Yamcha's coffee. They were small mutinies. "And a sexy space adventure would solve a lot of that angst," ChiChi finished.

"Go be a space slut for a few months," said Eighteen.

"Sex isn't going to solve my problems," Bulma sighed. She was learning that lately.

"Some men write their dick length in their profile info," ChiChi whispered.

"What?"

"They're lying," Eighteen stated.

"Dick length!? Why? Really?"

"Some of them are like," ChiChi measured the space in front of her face with two index fingers, "thissss long, but all of the Saiyans say they're—" her hands flew out wide—"this long."

"Download it," urged Eighteen.

"Download it! Download it!" ChiChi and Eighteen urged, their laughter breaking up the night.

...

As if the damned universe was trying to send her a message attached to ballistic missile, Bulma's potentially-last-day-on-Earth was growing increasingly hostile. She had to sign up for the Navy contracting gig by 6 tonight. As she drank her morning coffee, surveying her living room, her finger fiddled with the round top of a storage capsule.

Would she stay or would she go? She decided, instead of making a decision, she'd get ready for work. That was a decision. She had decided that she needed to make a decision, and she'd made one.

Maybe she could just fake her own death and start a new life?

Right on schedule, a final notice was slapped onto her front door as she was going to work. She looked at the back of the apartment manager incredulously, watching the woman's big behind swish down the hall. Bulma bared her teeth at the woman, giving into the dreadful immaturity that unfortunately always simmered at the surface. Then she muttered into her coffee all the way to her train.

At work, as the whirr and shriek of power tools ricocheted around the hangar, the girls, hungry for gossip, had asked her if she was still making illicit calls to her Saiyan. Bulma sighed dreamily and confirmed. Yes, she was still "seeing" him. The girls shrieked with pleasure, congratulating her on her piece of man meat. She wasn't getting nearly as much ass as she wished she was when the man was gone all the time, Bulma complained under her breath.

Things got out of hand when they asked her to describe what her Saiyan looked like. They wanted a visual of Vegeta that they could sink their teeth into, so they, too, could live the muscles and the experience of being lusted after by a strong, virulent warrior. Bulma's relationship with "her" Saiyan had devolved into a cheap romance book cover, but she played along. Red scarf knotted around her head, eyes round behind the refraction of her goggles, Bulma waxed poetic about all her favorite parts of Vegeta. His thick neck that she loved to lick in one long sweep from bottom to top. All the juicy meat of his arms, the perky round shape of his athletic ass, the slab of abs she worshiped. "Each little muscle stacked like Legos!" It sent the women into fits of laughter. "Underneath that tight suit," Bulma was dramatically orating, "is a body that could fog an old librarian's glasses. Every time he crosses his arms over his chest, my underwear curls off." As they cackled and fanned themselves, cleaning up for lunch, Bulma grew melancholy again. She could objectify Vegeta all day—what woman couldn't?—but this was More. M-O-R-E, more than just lust. More than just attraction. Her heart did little swooping things when he was near. He shouldn't have ever agreed to something more than just phone calls. He'd created a monster.

"I'd be looking to tie that man down," one of the older women shot her a wink as they shuffled down the hall with their lunch boxes. The women around them erupted with laughter at the suggestion.

"I've already considered that angle," Bulma sighed. "The mechanics of tying him down demand a whole lot of adamantium chain link I just don't have."

Like an orgasm, it wasn't a sweet, tame thing rolling over her, but violently needy. Every text from him thrust her deeper into love.

This was going to end in disaster.

The older woman frowned at Bulma. "Did you just say something?"

"No," Bulma grumbled.

At lunch, Bulma ate a cold sandwich in the break room, staring at the empty black screen of her phone.

At three o'clock, her phone vibrated in her pants pocket. Bulma reached for it so fast that it slipped from her hand, only for her to slap her hands around it on its descent but drop it once more. From the floor, the phone screen blazed.

Just a text from Yamcha.

 _See you tonight._

 _..._

It wasn't until after the final whistle that Bulma made a decision. She'd been hurrying to her train home, her metal lunch box clanging against her thigh. Her coveralls were damp with sweat against her lower back from the jaunt, the sidewalk rolling drunkenly under her. She was trying to meet Yamcha quickly to get this Capsule Corp business all over with, but she still had jet grease under her nails.

She'd heard her name called familiarly, and looked sideways in confusion.

Some old acquaintances waved, some rich kids with rich parents and the ambition only to spend their money. She slowed to a stop, disconcerted by their appearance. They smiled with artificial sweetness and asked questions that not at all subtly pried into her life.

And then one of them asked her how she was recovering from the break up. They smiled cruelly. The scandal, when Yamcha broke up with her for another woman.

If Bulma had been capable of channeling ki, she would have erupted into a fiery supernova with a shriek. She would really have to ask Vegeta how Saiyans did it.

She seethed all the way home. They thought _he'd_ broken it off with _her_? And they _pitied_ her!?

"Ma'am?" A gentleman on the train eyed her cautiously. "Are you okay? You're talking to yourself."

Bulma's pride was being hammered like a signpost by a drunken sailor. "This is not the way I want to be nailed!" She foamed.

Yamcha had ended things with _her?_ Yeah right. Not Yamcha, and his egg timer foreplay attempts. Yamcha, and his out of fashion navy blue suits. Yamcha, and his love of pickle sandwiches. Ugh, they made his breath smell awful. But no one was talking about _that!_

She took a scalding shower, found her most mouthwatering set of lingerie, and then delved into the dark recesses of her closet for the most perfect dress, cataloging each dress before coming away with a sensuous gold sheath, its modest hem belied by the jutting neckline. It was sensual and it was powerful. It wanted to be both things, just like her.

Her heels rang out punishingly as she stomped to the train station, taking it to the Naval recruitment center, where she signed her name to paper with enough force to cause the contract to burst into flames. The Saiyans stood stupidly, gawking at her. Then she stormed to the restaurant where she was meeting Yamcha, where history would be made, and in the history books, she'd be wearing this killer fucking dress.

...

For over an hour now, her and Yamcha's team of lawyers had prattled on about the latest episode of 24/9, a crime thriller that broadcasted from somewhere in the Pegasus Galaxy and involved a team of lawyers with superpowers. Because they would just not shut up, Bulma was well into her fifth cocktail. Her father had already worked out most of the details with the Briefs lawyers, everything falling perfectly into place for her best interests, and it made her unnaturally sour with him.

Bulma sighed, soft and gusty. Yamcha was stealing glances at her, but she wasn't paying him any attention. She wasn't paying the legalese much attention, either, lost in thought.

Bulma was thinking that she didn't want to touch this Capsule stuff with a ten foot pole. It was shamefully immature of her, but she didn't care. No one cared what she wanted. Why care about what they wanted?

Bulma was also thinking how weird it was that suddenly she had Yamcha's full attention. How many evenings had they gone out to places just like this, and she'd stared out the window in her best dress, waiting for him to get off his phone? To listen to her? For just a second of his undivided attention?

For someone to love her?

For someone to save her?

Her thoughts drifted to Vegeta.

Oh, it was unfair.

A lawyer brayed with laughter down the length of the table, and Bulma's lips drew into a line. Her eyes caught Yamcha's. He was already smiling gently at her, eyes warm. He nodded at her, once, a few locks of his hair letting go of their clasp and spilling over his eyes.

Bulma sipped the martini. The thing with Vegeta was, they'd both been stifling parts of themselves for so long, but then they'd collided with the other, and all their vulnerability and weirdness and emotion commingled. It erected a wall against the world, it kept them safe. They were two exiles who'd forged a partnership and an escape, who, in the protection of the dark, could share their secrets. But it was the no-strings and the devil-may-care that had buoyed them so far. What happened _after_ the escape? What was the glue that would keep them together when they were beyond the walls, when the world creeped back in through the cracks, fissures made by their jobs and time? The question was, could the wall keep them safe from each other?

The ball of despair started up its accretion in her gut again.

Bulma worried her lip, resting her cheek in her hand. The lawyers were all buzzing with half-drunk energy, arguing now about law school instructors and whose test score revealed them to be the smartest attorney at the table. All the Capsule papers had been signed. Someone might think the lawyers had something to celebrate that had nothing to do with her.

It didn't matter. Tomorrow she'd leave them all, leave Vegeta before he could leave her first. Finally she'd be the one who was leaving someone behind. "It's either him or me," she muttered, and drained the rest of her martini.

She almost choked, chest tightening. Because, without his mouth slanting over hers, stealing her breath until she was holding fistfuls of his hair, without his low and throaty chuckle that promised siege and surrender, and his infuriating, charming smirk that was so magical to watch emerge from someone so serious, how was she going to pull herself up and stand on both legs? How could she face her future without that? Bulma fought the impulse to sink her head into her arms on the table. There was stark, raw truth in it: that she wanted to spend yesterday with him, today with him, tomorrow with him, and the next day, and all the days after that. And if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck...it was love.

Bulma groaned just as the lawyers fractured into laughter.

Yamcha stood up to herd them out. Bulma stood, too, as they made a move to shake her hand.

Maybe, like ChiChi had suggested, she was confusing fantastic sex with depth of feeling. Maybe her upstairs and downstairs brains were having communication issues.

Someone had brought a photographer in, and they all stood shoulder to shoulder and smiled as the flash bulb blinded them.

The lawyers filed out, leaving Bulma and Yamcha standing there.

"One more bottle of champagne," he asked gently, "between us?"

Bulma looked at him for what felt like a long time. And then she nodded and slid back into her seat.

Yamcha ordered for them and excused himself to the restroom. Bulma sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the wall.

Her phone vibrated noisily against the table, tucked in her clutch.

She pulled it out vacantly.

Vegeta.

A wave of relief and joy crashed through her.

 _Where are you?_

It was stupid. It was reckless. It was wrong, but it felt right. Excitement vibrated through her. It was truth, bone deep knowing. If she could have anything in the world, any future, any altered past, it would lead her right back to this man.

Her thumb brushed her screen tenderly. Then she typed.

 _At the bottom of five martinis and a glass of champagne._

 _Panties?_

Pleasure was a hot flush through her body. Bulma's eyes skirted around the dining room as a smile tugged at her lips.

Even if there wouldn't ever be anything more than this, it was okay. She would gladly sacrifice herself on the pyre of her bad decisions. Nothing else mattered but this, right now. Nothing else was more integral to her being, nothing more immediately critical than unwinding into the woman who was free to just be, and the man who encouraged her to be so. The air was electric between them, its charge stretching all the way from her table to the other side of the city, wherever in the darkness he inhabited and waited.

 _Black._

Yamcha was at her side again, and then a phone rang, and Yamcha's hand went to his coat pocket. "I gotta take this," Yamcha apologized, putting his hand over the speaker of his phone and turning right back around. She waved him off without looking up. Bulma was sinking deep and exultant into the sea of their escape without a single thought of whether or not she could breathe underwater. Or was it more like standing back up after being knocked down, and facing off the world, shoulder to shoulder with a partner who knew all her weaknesses and, despite them, had her back? Didn't matter if tomorrow never came. Only mattered that they made a stand.

S _hould I pull them off with my teeth? Or make you take them off for me?_

Bulma rested her chin on her knuckles and smiled at her phone lazily. One night wouldn't hurt. One night would never hurt. Only tomorrow would hurt, and she'd deal with it when it came. _Maybe tonight I want to be in control._

 _How would you manage that?_

 _I've been thinking about investing in some adamantium chains._ A sigh escaped her nose and her guts tied into a complicated knot. She glanced around the room.

She was a shameless, dirty flirt. How would she ever break herself of this weakness for Vegeta? It was a really _strong_ weakness.

Getting off planet was the preemptive strike, yet the moment he snapped his fingers with a, "Wait, but I need you," it was "Oh, well, okay, if you need me." She needed to recode her brain. The blame couldn't all be heaped on her, though. After all, like she'd told ChiChi, Vegeta'd told her he didn't date...

" _Then what happened?"_

" _Then he kissed the hell out of me."_

Bulma sent him her location.

Candelight fractured in the crystal tableware as Bulma's fingers moved over the keyboard. A heavy sigh escaped her even as excitement trilled through her synapses. Her body recognized danger and thrilled at it. It was a curse. "Work hard, play hard," she muttered, as Yamcha's figure approached their table.

"Sorry," he gushed, falling back into his seat, and he really did look sorry. "Work."

"Used to it," she said, tucking her phone back into her clutch. Her smirk was humorless. Her fingers wrapped around the glass of champagne and she finally gave him her full attention.

Yamcha's confidence dissolved a little before her eyes. He had the sweetest eyes, she realized. Vegeta's were black on black, a mirror, intensely focused and complete. She was often the focus of that consuming gaze.

"About that," Yamcha started, clasping his hands in front of him on the table.

Bulma waited.

"I'm sorry," he gushed. "I know I said it already, but I'm sorry. I'd like to try it all over again, you know?" The statement was open-ended. He could have meant he'd like to go back in time and fix things, but she didn't think so. "But. I know," he trailed off. "I know you're seeing someone."

"How do you know that?"

His eyes trailed over the objects on their table. "I saw the armor in your living room."

She blinked. Then her arms crossed, and she looked away. "Aren't you seeing someone else, too?" Then she pinned him with a stare. "A Saiyan, I heard."

Yamcha had the audacity to blush. "I _was_ seeing someone. Just dating around. Nothing serious."

He looked as if he was working up to something, and then a wry, self-defeating smile twisted his features and he sighed loudly. "But really. A Saiyan?" He teased her, eyebrow winging. "I thought you preferred romance, and, and, mental acuity."

His insult jarred her. Her eyes narrowed. "The man I'm seeing is sharp as a tack." Slowly, she popped a grape in her mouth, lips sliding around the fruit's flesh. She bit into it. "And his favorite thing in the world is eating my pussy." She swallowed, and Yamcha's eyes darted to the flex of her throat.

Yamcha's brows pulled into a stormy line as the mood shifted. "So he's your rebound."

"Are you kidding me?" She'd lowered her voice because she wanted to yell. It wasn't super effective. "Not everything's about you."

Yamcha wrestled his own frustration. "Saiyans are like frat boys. They have two settings: fighting and partying. How could I not assume someone wickedly smart like you is using a Saiyan as a distraction?"

Bulma gaped. " _Using_ him? Like a toy?" ChiChi would have approved.

"It's not like they make good dinner company."

"And you do?" Bulma was hanging on to the volume of her voice by the skin of her teeth. "Do you know how many times I've eaten my dinner alone while you're a few meters away on the phone?" She struggled not to grab his tie and bare her teeth at him. "How many birthdays and anniversaries I sat alone through?"

Yamcha had the audacity to look astonished. And then he deflated. "I was working." His eyes warred between heat and disappointment. "I thought that's what you wanted me to do. When I first came here, that's how I could win your affection. You know?" His voice gentled. "To become like you."

Bulma was now the one knocked back a pace. "Like me?"

"Bulma." Yamcha looked like he might tear out his hair, and then he clasped his hands together on the table as if to hold himself together. "I had to work to get into your circles. To make you notice me. To stand out. To just stay abreast of everyone, like I was always a second away from being left behind. I just wanted you to like me. I wanted to be enough for you."

Her mouth parted on words that weren't fully formed. Then grasped on to the one thought that made sense. "You were often talking to other women." Her voice was a dangerous growl.

Disappointment wafted off him. "Yeah," he admitted. "Sometimes I needed an outlet. From work. Even from you. You were a little intense for me." He looked at her like a man who had hit bottom and realized what a prize he'd had before he squandered it. His eyes glittered with feeling. "That doesn't make it right."

Is that why he'd helped her win back Capsule Corporation? To atone for all his sins?

He was too late.

 _You were a little intense for me._ Yamcha had lacked intensity. That was true, she realized. He was harmless and eager to please, but he'd also bored her. He wasn't very imaginative on dates or in bed, but she'd misconstrued that as reliability at the time. Vegeta oozed danger, and didn't care if he pleased anyone. She couldn't rely on him to be here from one day to the next. What could be said of her for turning to someone so opposite? She'd once heard an engineer murmur about Vegeta, _"I'd stay away from that one if I were you. You mess with the reaper, you get the scythe."_ Bulma had canted a little. After all, she'd just sent the reaper a dirty wink.

Bulma sighed and leaned back. "Let's try being friends, shall we, Yamcha?" Her stare was unyielding. "Let's try moving forward. I have a suspicion that we might make better friends than lovers."

Struck with rejection, Yamcha recovered quickly, laughing a little too forcefully. "Yeah!" He scratched his nails in his hair, the tousled lengths falling forward into his eyes. "You were a little too intense for me there, too."

Bulma's eyebrows shot up. And then she laughed. "Then is it any surprise I wound up with a Saiyan?" She poured them both another glass of champagne.

"Intensity isn't the same as finesse," Yamcha grouched.

"Oh, don't worry about his finesse." Bulma's smiled wickedly, eyelids hooded. "He's a finely honed tool."

"I hope you know what you're doing," Yamcha sighed.

Her confidence faltered. She did not. She was shooting from the hip, and she was just waiting for it to be over so she could regret it all later. At least tomorrow she had somewhere to run when shit hit the fan.

"To new things," she said loudly, leaning her glass over the candlelight.

He lightly knocked his against hers. "To new things. To Capsule Corp. To you."

Bulma drained her glass, the alcohol making quick work of what remained of her wits, and then stood.

Yamcha, sensing the night was over, stood and helped her out of her chair, handing her her clutch. She held out her hand. He shook it, their grips firm.

His phone rang again, and he was mumbling sorry, fishing in his coat pocket for it, but she was already making her way out the door.

Heels slapping pavement, the dry heat of summer embraced her as she strode out the door. It felt like a black cloud of anxiety followed. She hurried her pace, ducking her head and maneuvering to outrun it. The world sloshed back and forth a little. Absorbed in remaining on two feet, she ran right into someone as she queued past the windows of the restaurant.

She startled, gaze jerking up, and met Vegeta's sharp stare as his hands reached out to steady her.

For a breathless moment, they just looked at one another.

And the world was corrected.

Her gaze ate him up. And then she threw her arms around his waist and clutched him tightly, heedless of the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.

Just held him, until he heard something muffled coming from his shoulder.

Eyes wide, he looked down.

Doe eyes blinked back. "I said, this is the first time we've ever hugged."

Vegeta resettled his gloved hands at her waist, gazing out over traffic.

"You're not bad at it," she continued. "Three out of five stars."

He let out a huff of air. "Three? How insulting."

"You need practice."

She grinned up at him. She couldn't help it. The anxiety receded, like water spiraling down the drain. If this was all they'd ever had then she'd take it. Doomed? In his arms, she was ready to be doomed a thousand times over.

She untangled herself from him. The smell of fizzy champagne lingered. His eyes raked her, approving the dress. His lip curled at the corner, his eyes heating. "Special occasion?" His voice was a hot rumble.

She could have swooned. His smirks were sharp as any shit-talking Saiyans, but this one in particular was reserved for her, softened at the edges but still hungry with intent, relaxing his normally humorless and focused features. It was trust, it was pleasure. It was a smile that was all hers.

"Mmhmm," she answered vaguely. "Do you like my dress?"

"Mmhmm," was his answer. Vegeta was not into public displays. He liked to look as dignified as possible, but she felt there was an element of shy embarrasment, too. To spite him, she moved his hands up her waist toward her breasts. He jerked back.

He leveled a disapproving look. "I want to grab dinner," he declared. "Hungry?"

"Hungry for a few things. Can you be specific?" Her gaze smoldered under heavy lids, and she splayed her hand against his chest, palm to palm with the bloody hand print. Even through the breast plate, his skin hummed warmly against her palm. She leaned into him now, watching him with smoldering mischief.

Like any warrior, he stayed straight against her onslaught, but her insouciant grin was shaking him. He just couldn't help it. His gloved hand skated her side, came to rest at her lower back. The intent in his eyes sharpened.

Vegeta's eyes caught movement behind her, and he glanced immediately over her shoulder. He stiffened, intensely focused.

Yamcha had halted just outside the doors, staring with rapidly growing astonishment.

Bulma wasn't paying attention. She was exploring the muscled contours of Vegeta's forearms with a sweep of her palm before hooking her arm into his and pressing her cheek into his shoulder, listing places to eat. Everything in his body seemed ready to spill into motion, straining for battle, yet predatorily still. His eyes pierced Yamcha's, contempt rolling off him in waves. The hand at her back pressed her to him. Claiming.

The other mans' gaze dropped, recognizing the gesture. Some emotion flashed in his eyes, but the man didn't step forward. Vegeta was petty enough to feel smug about it. And then he led Bulma the other way.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: True fact: I have worked on this chapter every day for months. Scribbling notes in the middle of the grocery store aisle and punishing my keyboard well before dawn. I'm sorry this chapter arrived to you so late. Writing is hard. This chapter isn't perfect and neither am I. True fact #2: Next chapter is close. Real close. #3: There's a one shot in the pipeline. #4: I've not been very good about checking my email or participating in the fandom lately. But I miss the fuck out of my readers. I'm sorry. I've been neglectful. I love you. I'll do better.


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